Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Archive 7

The Great Backlog Drive
PanydThe muffin is not subtle 22:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Can an article be created for Technical Stopover?
The term is used in transport, mainly commercial aviation and is referred to as 'Tech Stop'. Lets ay an airline is operating route A-b-C-D, with no traffic rights to/from b which is a tech stop only, it may involve one or more or even all of the following:

1. refuelling 2. crew change 3. food/drink/supplies restocking and cleaning of aircraft

However the airline is not allowed to tranport passengers or cargo any where to or from b.116.71.19.75 (talk) 16:00, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Could be an article, but it would have to be more than just a dictionary definition (otherwise you can use wiktionary). You will also need a couple of reliable sources which cover the term, e.g. is it in any dictionaries? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:30, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

A crazy idea...again.
I have had the benifit of a few computer programming courses over the past few months, orienting me more to the language of python. We have talked many times about a bot, and I had one going, but it didn't address all the conflicts. I now feel and have rethought how to address the issues that came up and would like to takle the bot idea again. It would realize the difference between new articles in the mainspace and accepted ones just not logged yet, and userpage transfering, for you programming people, I didn't know about the .split(String) and that would help address the issue. Comments? DQ.alt (t)  (e)  18:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Since no one is commenting and we have a huge backlog, I will get started. -- DQ  (t)  (e)  21:12, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

iPhoneEmu unprotect and move User:Colejohnson66/iPhoneEmu to it
So? This new version is much better and with references! --Colejohnson66 (talk) 03:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * As there is a clear conflict of interest and the entire article is based on self published sources, with no implication of notability.-- Terrillja talk  05:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well how do I make it? --Colejohnson66 (talk) 15:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Read WP:COI and WP:N. As it lacks any sources other than its own website, it clearly does not meet WP:N at this point in time.-- Terrillja talk  21:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There is another issue with this article - one that deals with piracy. Since this person has written an emulator to emulate current software, I would construe that as stealing. I wonder what Steve Jobs would have to say about this app? Whose Your Guy (talk) 15:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. Just take a look at the WINE project, which is a emulation layer to run Windows programs in Linux. I don't see how such an app compatibility library to run iPhone apps on PC is piracy - Emulation != Piracy (just saying). Some Wiki Editor (talk) 01:44, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed update of logo
What do you think? Mono (talk) 21:24, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I like it. I have two more that I uploaded based off of Mono's SVG. They're right below this comment. I think it's high time for a modernization, and these actually look pretty good.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  23:35, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I like them very much, but the grey isn't very appealing. —  Ancient Apparition •  Champagne?  • 4:24pm • 05:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't classify it as minor, but it is excellent. If Ancient's point about the grey stands, perhaps a slightly more Vectory blue-grey tone? sonia ♫  05:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Also I think the W should stay small and in either the top-left or right-hand corners, it doesn't look so good in the centre over the lines, those are just my thoughts. —  Ancient Apparition •  Champagne?  • 4:28pm • 05:28, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * In reply to Sven's designs, I think those would be appealing as a way to further set off the various subtemplates of AFC submission; that is, the "onhold" and "declined" variations. Robert Skyhawk (T C B) 17:11, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that is what I planned them for. When the overhaul gets consensus, I intend on inserting them into Template:Afc decline and Template:Afc onhold as well.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  21:12, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the new ones, too. More smooth. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  22:56, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I like Sven's idea for changing the hold and decline icons. However changing the main logo, it has been historically a green cross. This change will make it a white cross with a green background making it look more like the American red cross only green. And it is Articles for Creation. In the original logo there are two articles, whereas this one only has one. A few adjustments are needed, but the overall proposal is good. Alpha Quadrant   talk    14:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I did a mock up, and if we invert the colors (green cross on white) it looks terrible. I also tweaked the colors and did a few versions that were closer to what AA asked for, but again, they didn't look as good. It could be that I've got no game, so to speak, when it comes to Inkscape, but the current versions outclassed anything I could come up with.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  04:35, 25 December 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ - shows half the time, with a link to this discussion. Mono (talk) 23:41, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * For pending submissions could a new icon be used? For example a circle with a question mark using Sven's and Mono's design. The + symbol is for created submissions, just a thought. Alpha Quadrant    talk    16:03, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. Mono (talk) 22:42, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposal on Deletion of Blanked AfCs
Several proposals have been put forward over the years on what to do with the ten thousand or so declined AfC submissions. Most I have seen deal in general terms, proposing to delete large swaths of these. This proposal is very specific, and deals with a much smaller percentage of declined submissions. It is as follows:


 * AfC submissions that have been blanked for over a month are to be deleted

What this means is that pages declined and blanked as copyright infringements, and left untouched for over a month, would be tagged CSD G12, and more than likely immediately deleted as any other unambiguous copyright infringement would be.

Blanked pages are a small subset of the overall declined submissions, and only cover copyright infringements, attack pages, and personal information/security issues. In most cases, personal information will have been removed via the admin tool revdel, or by oversighters, and the blanked pages are truly blank underneath the templates.

This proposal would result in the removal of a large amount of content that would have already been deleted had it been anywhere else on Wikipedia.

Comments
Would it be worth considering just revdel of the copyvio versions, leaving the 'declined as copyvio' page, so that non-admin AFC folks could see that a previous submission had been declined as copyvio?  Chzz  ► 22:57, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) As proposer;   S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Aye. Mono (talk) 22:54, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, per WP:RD1 and common sense. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  22:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Good idea, this crap would have been zapped instantly anywhere else. I've got a list ready to delete this stuff that there's no reason at all to keep around. (From a sampling of it.  Wow, there's some bad stuff here.) Courcelles 19:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Support that is a good idea. Alpha Quadrant    talk    13:58, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Support I didn't even think we kept blank articles at all but this is definitely worth it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:53, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Support Deletion The Earwig nuked Copyvios a long while back, but it's time to shake this again. I would not recommend tagging them each for deletion though, let an admin do it. -- DQ  (t)  Merry Chrismasand a Happy New Year! 02:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * RevDel works better when there's something worth saving. There's nothing like that here. A decent entry in the deletion log would be as useful to non-admins as a crossed-out line in history. Courcelles 19:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The deletion log entry would only help if the AFC reviewer checked the logs of each and every AFC. Which I doubt will happen.
 * If a page exists, and has history, they'd see it.
 * The 'something worth saving' would be the name of the creator, and the decline rationale (which would include the URL of the site it came from).  Chzz  ► 18:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps RevDel by bot or salting... Mono (talk) 19:33, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why we would bother to save the creator information and decline rationale. The version they created would be unusable, and the decline rationale would be one of the three variations of it's unusable. Yes, good record keeping is an excellent skill to have, but keeping records of things that realistically have no chance of being used, especially in these cases where using the contents of the blanked pages would break policy, doesn't seem practical.
 * Also, suppose that someone wants to create an article on some topic, and submits at AfC a passable article, created from scratch, with sources and everything, but six months earlier, someone else created an AfC on the same topic that was entirely cut and pasted in, and then subsequently blanked by the reviewers. The new article should not be tied to the old one at all. It's not like the new, good, article was created from the old one, they are essentially unrelated. Attaching the new edit history to the old one would be inaccurate. Sure they have the same name, but by saving bad content we are attaching a good, clean article, to a tainted one, where the two never were worked on as one item.
 * I admit that the above was a rather long winded argument, but still, after thinking about what you said, in my opinion, it is a far better idea to get rid of these things entirely.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  04:51, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you're assuming that the entire page is copyvio, which is not always the case - unless this only applies to such cases?  Chzz  ► 00:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This is (as I understand it) only for articles that have been completely blanked with the Afc blanked template. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  00:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * @ Fetchcomms: Yes, exactly.
 * @ The AfC community: Now, is six people a consensus to move forward, or should we wait for a few more?  S ven M anguard   Wha?  01:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This is sufficent, probally the most users we will get. -- DQ  (t)  Merry Chrismasand a Happy New Year! 02:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Procedure for deletion
How? Mono (talk) 02:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Done, initially using AWB. Now, how to keep this going forward... either every month cleaning out transclusions of the blanked template- easy if an admin remembers/is prompted; or by writing an adminbot.  Courcelles 02:18, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I remember talk a few months back about an admin bot, but pages tagged with that are not reviewed before deletion, if that is fine with the community I would be willing to code it (after I finish my backlog of bot projects currently). -- DQ  (t)  Merry Chrismasand a Happy New Year! 02:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Is this stuff logged somewhere?  Chzz  ► 22:54, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Like what the bot would be doing? I could get it to do that. -- DQ  (t)   (e)  19:51, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

"Quick fail criterion 4"
This criterion reads...: "No reliable sources: In order to be accepted, all articles must include at least one third-party reliable source. If no sources are listed, the only sources listed are unreliable (such as MySpace or YouTube), or the only sources are not published by a third party (such as the subject's website or any Wikimedia site), the article cannot be accepted. Tag the article with . "

I am unaware of any policy that requires Wikipedia articles to include sources. Indeed, we have plenty of articles without them. WP:V obviously requires that the content of an article is verifiable, and WP:DEL suggests that articles which cannot be sourced should be deleted. However I think it's instruction creep to suggest that articles can only ever be created if they list sources. There is no such requirement on articles which are created the old-fashioned way rather than through AfC!

Perhaps this criterion ought to be removed or reworded so that it fits in with policy? Regards, The Land (talk) 17:49, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not providing an opinion on your proposal just yet, bit as I recall, the justification behind #4 is that our submissions are theoretically held to a higher standard than a page created by an account in the mainspace. I don't recall where I read that rationale, and perhaps consensus will dictate that it's outdated. Robert Skyhawk (T C B) 18:31, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Every article should have sources. In fact there are people, myself included, that would delete any article that has no sources, period. The whole concept of creating a usable encyclopedia is founded upon the principle that the information is accurate and reliable. In order for that to be assured, we need sources. I am strongly in favor of not changing this decline rationale.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  19:25, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This is fundamental...I personally would support blanking all unreferenced articles, like the BLP proposal. Mono (talk) 20:51, 23 December 2010 (UTC)


 * That there are articles already on Wikipedia without sources is not a reason to have low standards. When starting an article from scratch, it should be obvious that sources should be included. It would be understandable for a new editor to get this wrong through inexperience, but as AfC is a venue to get other editors to create articles for those who don't know how standards should be higher. The editor has to get their information from somewhere so that source should be referenced. Verifiability is policy. The only reason being unreferenced is not a deletion criteria is the sheer number of articles that would then be open to deletion as a result; who knows, perhaps one day it will be. This apparent disparity is due to rising standards and shouldn't be used as an excuse to shoo through unreferenced articles. Criterion 4 is certainly a good idea. Nev1 (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)


 * There is certainly a consensus in the community at large that all articles should be sourced. The policy of No original research states: "Wikipedia does not publish original research. The term "original research" refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and stories—not already published by reliable sources. It also refers to any analysis or synthesis of published material to advance a position not advanced by the sources." Although it goes on to say, "This means that all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed. The sourcing policy, Verifiability, says a source must be provided for all quotations, and for anything challenged or likely to be challenged—but a source must exist even for material that is never challenged. "Paris is the capital of France" needs no source because no one is likely to object to it, but we know that sources for that sentence exist."  I would encourage you to read on,  "If no source exists for something you want to add to Wikipedia, it is "original research". To demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be able to cite reliable published sources that are both directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the material as presented." I rest my case. Edit 4K! ~Gosox ( 55 )( 55 ) 03:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

So much unreferenced content exists because too many new and anonymous users fly by, add content, and never cite their sources. I think requiring that citation as the submission is created is the best time to get users to cite their sources. Time and time again, I see a submission put on hold or declined for lack of referencing, and the submitter comes along and fixes it. Other times, they admit that the content is made up or otherwise unverifiable. So I've always thought this is a great requirement. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:36, 30 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the many responses. On reflection I agree it's a useful requirement, particularly given that these are articles you guys are creating on behalf of other people, so it is a good opportunity to ensure only referenced material is added. The Land (talk) 12:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Cooperation with ru-wiki Incubator
Hello. I'm a participant of ru-wiki's Article Incubator (it is important to notice, that we use it not like your WP:Article Incubator, but like WP:Articles for creation). So after creation by new user we check new article and move in mainspace if it is good. And sometimes we have articles written in English in our Incubator. So, I want to ask you - can we move (for example by copy-pasting or another way) this articles from ru-Incubator to WP:Articles for creation or maybe to some other project in English WP? For example now we have such an article: Sanatoria and Resorts of Ulyanovsk Region. Dmitry89 (talk) 21:04, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You would be welcome to create content in the Articles for creation, but of course it would be good if you don't move over the material that you already know is unsuitable, such as vandalism, blank, or known copyright problems. I believe it may be possible to WP:transwiki move content so as to retain attribution.  Otherwise please add a comment when creating the contrution that attributes the IP and time and location of the original content.  Are ru licenses the same as here? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:55, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * OK checking out special:Import there is no "ru" in the dropdown box, so although special:import is possible for some languages, I will have to investigate further. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:29, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * In the past, I've done transwiki'ing between wmf wikis not on the list, but it has to involve Meta (since that *is* on the list). Unfortunately, you have to be (or get) an admin on meta to import it there, then import it here (enwiki). As I'm an admin on Meta, I'd be willing to do this if someone poked me when needed. Killiondude (talk) 08:26, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * To get ru added to the dropdown list in special:import, do we need to file a Bugzilla report? Anyway all this trouble is only worthwhile if we use the articles.  So how about the procedure is to post the links to the potential articles here? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:01, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Mmm, posting here links to the potential articles is a good idea. So as I see this idea - we will post on this talk pages a request, and if article has potential (if somebody posts that article is ok), we will ask Killiondude to move it to your project, yeah? Dmitry89 (talk) 08:55, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * For [[:ru:Википедия:Проект:Инкубатор/Статьи/Sanatoria and Resorts of Ulyanovsk Region it is slightly promotional tone and has no references, so it is not acceptable here yet. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:04, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The Museum of One Painting n. a. G. V. Myasnikov’s
Here one else article in English, what do you think about it? Dmitry89 (talk) 11:33, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * ru:Музей одной картины имени Г.В. Мясникова - aleady in russian. --Drakosh (talk) 14:10, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This one looks acceptable, we just have to start that move process! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:06, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, Killiondude promises to help with import. Who will post a request on his talkpage? Or what to do next? Dmitry89 (talk) 19:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, it's all set @ meta: The Museum of One Painting n. a. G. V. Myasnikov’s. What page title do we want it at enwiki? Killiondude (talk) 21:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe "The Museum of One Painting named after G. V. Myasnikov" like Crimea State Medical University named after S. I. Georgievsky or Zaporizhia Region Universal Scientific Library named after A.M. Gorky. Dmitry89 (talk) 05:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, ✅ Killiondude (talk) 19:13, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Dmitry89 (talk) 21:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Anton Kurakins
One else. Defender of reserve squad of Celtic. Dmitry89 (talk) 06:53, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * May not yet meet WP:ATHLETE yet, but probably will do so in the future. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

piShaper
New article in English. Is it notable for English WP? Dmitry89 (talk) 08:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks to be a promotion for the PiShaper product. It will need independent references to show notability, and a rewrite to make it less of a promotion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:42, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks, we've decided to delete it. Dmitry89 (talk) 09:25, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

AFC Submissions in userspace
Is there a preferred way to deal with AFC submissions that are created in users' own userspace? I see two options:
 * Move them to the proper Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/... location
 * Review them in userspace as normal, moving them to mainspace if accepted.

Thoughts? Robert Skyhawk (T C B) 23:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I always move them, as my script doesn't work if it's in the userspace. There's a handy button toward the bottom of the template. Mono (talk) 00:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I, like Mono, just move them too. -- DQ  (t)  Merry Chrismasand a Happy New Year! 15:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I would also usually move them to the Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation/ space. ~Gosox ( 55 )( 55 ) 20:11, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I move them to Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation/ and CSD the redirect with R3. I then review the submission and inform the author. Alpha Quadrant    talk    21:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm worried by the idea of immediately R3ing the redirect. Firstly it may create confusion for the new user if they can't find their article.  Secondly I've started AFCing articles in user space where they've made a requested move as a RM is not the correct procedure.  In this instance they may not even be aware of the fact that their article was turned into an AfC submission so they may be even more confused.  Can I suggest waiting a while before R3ing the redirect? Dpmuk (talk) 11:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't see any benefits in deleting the redirect ... what is the reason for doing this? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:24, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No point deleting the redir, as far as I can see. They're cheap; leave the redir.  Chzz  ► 22:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Assessment
I propose eliminating the assessment function of this project. After articles are created, ths project doesn't have a continuing role with them, and the purpose of assessment is solely to plan for further development of the article. There doesn't seem to be any purpose in this project revisiting articles to reassess them continually. Given that there are now so many subject matter projects, it's easy for the AfC reviewer to provide an initial assessment via one of those projects' assessment schemes. Is there any reason to preserve this project's assessment function given this? --Bsherr (talk) 17:58, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it's useful in keeping track of where AfC content has gone. I personally have taken an AfC-created article and successfully gotten it up to GA-level. We've had other GAs, an FP from FFU and even an FA, per WikiProject Articles for creation/Showcase. I don't see how leaving the assessment bit there hurts—I'm open to developing articles via AfC if I know stuff about the topic. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  20:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * For that purpose, I wouldn't object to reconstruing AfC as part of an article's article history rather than the article being a continuing constituent of the project. I don't propose dispensing with tracking FAs and GAs. --Bsherr (talk) 20:55, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, there are valid points to both comments here. I believe that Fetchcomms is correct in that there is a desire to track what has come out of AfC, however at the same time, the categorizing is a pain. The WikiProject banner that AfC uses, along with exactly every single other WikiProject, incorporates the ratings right in, (although I believe that AfC has set the importance parameter to inactive.) I went through a while back and categorized a whole slew of ones left categorized, however that kind of thing can easily be done by a bot, and I think that there are bots that do that. Should we track one down and implement it for AfC?  S ven M anguard   Wha?  21:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The question would then become what to do if assessments conflict. It would be easier to reconstrue AfC as a article history milestone. --Bsherr (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree with you very strongly on this. AfC is a project just like any other, and the project banner has a multitude of purposes other than bragging rights. Replacing the banners with milestones will cost us much of our tracking and sorting abilities, the milestone system would have a heavy cost in efficiency, as everything would have to be done manually, rather than by the tools we all use at AfC, and swapping out the currently tagged pages would require an inordinate amount of effort to implement. All in all, what you're asking us to do is to make an exceedingly complex and difficult change to swap a useful tool with a less useful one, which will paralyze an already perpetually backlogged project, based off of a reasoning that you don't think the current one is used or needed. I'm sorry, but it is used, it isn't harming anything, and the mess that your suggestion would cause would far outweigh any possible benefits this would have.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  21:35, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Replacing the project banner with a component of the article history template would result in no loss of tracking ability regarding good articles and featured articles, because categories could be created for articles that are AfC created and are GAs or FAs. It's not clear what the benefit of tracking the other class categories is, since they are individual to each project. The current transclusions can all be replaced by my AWB bot, and then the current template can be replaced with a template that substitutes the article history banner with the appropriate parameters. Does this address your concerns? If not, why not?
 * To say that AfC is like other projects is not correct. Most projects exist to provide ongoing support to the development of articles. AfC doesn't do this. Projects that don't do this typically don't assess their articles. What other purposes does the banner serve? --Bsherr (talk) 19:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Fetchcomms has already made it clear that people do work on the articles that come through AfC. There is also one critical argument I neglected to mention earlier. Removing the AfC banners will disable the Article Alert bot's alerts of AfC articles up for promotion, or more importantly, deletion. Since many of the articles that come through AfC were created by users that might not stay with Wikipedia, and are unlikely to have been seen by many other Wikiprojects or participatns, the Article Alerts serve to warn AfC, essentially the last line of defense, of articles on the road to deletion.
 * I am curious, however, to find out why you're pushing so hard for this. It does not seem like a particularly critical or important change, nor do I know of any precedent behind it.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  01:18, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for redirect
I submitted a request twice, and am unable to find them despite having cleared cache. Please let me know if I have submitted incorrectly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.143.210.148 (talk) 04:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That request was approved.    ArcAngel    (talk) ) 04:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Propose to remove "Hold" status
I've mentioned this before; sorry - can't remember where;

I think AFC would work better if there was no such thing as "Hold". Reasons;


 * The "fix it in 24 hours" goes against the Wikipedia ethos of No deadline
 * It can be confusing to new users; a black-and-white "yes" or "no" would be simpler; of course, it states they can "resubmit any time"
 * Hold is one of the reasons this gets backlogged so easily. Things languish, and it is quite an effort to check the history, see if the issues have been addressed - or if they're still being worked on
 * It is a misleading 'backlog' because, as a reviewer, there is often nothing you can do with an article which is held; so the list of "held" submissions makes AFC appear more backlogged than it is; there might appear to be a whole load of submissions, but if the reviewers cannot do anything with them, then there is actually no backlog
 * The existence of "Hold" can make it seen that "Decline" is more final. ie, the article was held, and then - it can appear to new-user - that we've decided it just didn't make the grade, and they are disillusioned. If it is clear that the review is merely to decide if, right now, the submission is ready then it might help encourage improvements and resubmissions

Mostly: Keep It Simple.

We can work to make it clearer, and more friendly, that they are very welcome to resubmit if they think the issues can be addressed...but, can we do away with hold?

Comments and support/oppose are very welcome. Best,  Chzz  ► 10:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Support removal of "hold" status, as proposer, for reasons stated above.  Chzz  ► 10:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hold I have to think on this; will render decision in 24 hours.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  15:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Chzz makes a good argument.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  20:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment I am not sure, new editors don't understand that submissions are simply moved. They assume their submissions are not kept. The purpose of the hold is to allow the author and other editors to work on the submission and address the issues. I agree it is increasing the appearance of the backlog, but the hold is an effective way to get other reviewers to take a look at submissions that are close to being accepted, but still have minor issues. Alpha Quadrant    talk    00:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your comment, regarding 'move' ? Submissions are sometimes moved from user subpages to WT:AFC, for review - but whether they're then deleted, held or accepted, I don't see why that affect anything? And there is a redir, of course. Sometimes - less often - an article is moved from live to WT:AFC. Sorry...but I'm just not seeing the connection here; what has 'move' got to do with it?  Chzz  ► 04:41, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What I mean to say is most new users assume the Article Wizard is the only way to create an article. Unless they read up on Wikipedia's help pages they wouldn't know. The other day I had someone in IRC asking how they could be promoted to "WP:Good Article Reviewer" status. They assume the Article Wizard is a "form" that is discarded when declined. It would explain why many submitters will rush to resubmit after a decline. My point is, most submitters don't know that submissions are simply moved from one namespace to another. In most places in the real world "declined" proposals are usually not kept, perhaps that should be made clearer with a note of some fashion on the decline template. I think rather than removing hold, the purpose should change. Currently, the reviewing instructions state that if a reviewer is unsure whether the submission is acceptable then they can leave it for the another reviewer. Unfortunately it is impossible to tell which submissions have been looked at by a reviewer and left for another, unless they specifically leave a note. Even then, most reviewers don't browse submissions pending review. Why not use the hold as a way to get a second review, or if the article has minor issues that need to be addressed. (e.x. articles that need to be wikifyed, inline citations...) Thoughts? Alpha Quadrant    talk    19:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe there needs to be two kinds of declines: "hard" and "soft" (though those names are really inadequate). A hard decline would be for articles that are unlikely to be approved anytime in the near future in anything resembling their current state, e.g. tests/vandalism, articles that violate WP:NOT, articles about subjects that are apparently not notable, copyvios, blatant advertising, etc... Users are, of course, always free to improve articles and resubmit them, but the message on hard declines would more strongly suggest that Wikipedia is not the right place for such material at this time. Soft declined articles ("not yet ready" articles?) wouldn't get a red declined banner, but would indicate that improvements are needed before the article can be improved, but the proposal is fundamentally salvageable.
 * My concern is that doing away with the "hold" status would be discouraging to new editors who have produced quality articles that are not quite ready for prime time. For example, I came across Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Integrative Medicine in the pending queue yesterday. Go check it out if you have time. It's a great new article that's far better than the vast majority of new pages I see, especially for one from a new editor (so good that I spent a good while trying to find copyright infringement) that could well have gone to the mainspace immediately, but it had some issues that would best be corrected by the original author first (wrong footnote format, a bunch of uncited quotes and facts in the first half of the article, general lack of wikilinks). And yes I know there are some OR concerns, but the goal isn't to get it to GA status before its even approved! I placed it on hold and asked the author to take a look, especially since he/she is in the best position to cite sources for the unsourced information. Declining such a quality new article would be really discouraging to the author and would feel really wrong to me, but if we adopted this proposal, my only alternative would be to approve it and move it to the mainspace (or keep it in pending, but clogging up that queue is even worse). To me, hold seemed perfect for this kind of situation.
 * It would also be really cool if some sort of wiki-magic could provide a single push button in the declined template that users can press to resubmit once issues are addressed. That would make it more obvious that declines aren't final and would also prevent the many issues users have figuring out how to move their article back to proposed status. Zachlipton (talk) 21:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No system is perfect - whether we have hold or not, some things slip through the nets. But, I'm convinced it is a net negative. The article you described is far from typical, and in such a case I'd suggest that, if we didn't have 'hold', it would be quite easy to 'decline', and discuss with the user what needed to change. Preferably, working with them to help them.
 * Often reviewers are not quite sure which decision to make (acceptable or not), and put things 'on hold' as a kinda softer version of turning it down. That means, it sits in a queue nobody can act upon, in the hope the user will do something. It's more confusing to the majority of users than simply saying "Sorry - can't accept that because of X, Y and a bit of Z. Please fix that up and try again, or ask for help".
 * I do agree that submitting should be easier (wiki magic). Then again, there are over 9000 things on the wiki that I wish were easier...
 * In fact, I would like to see reform in the whole process for new users joining, and creating articles; I think we need to 'merge' several processes, and make things much more friendly; I've tried to raise that before - see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2010. - Change We Need, but that takes time.
 * Meanwhile, this is the system we have, and 'hold' is largely not constructive - and it's an easy fix to just do away with it.  Chzz  ► 07:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. The amount of submissions that are put On Hold these days is huge, and these submissions are often left to languish in the Pending category, artificially inflating our backlog. What's more, these Holds are usually just declined after 24 hours due to inactivity. And even in the case of submissions that are improved, what if it isn't good enough? Do we leave it on hold? Decline it? I very much prefer the idea of a "black and white" system, in which a Pending submission is either Accepted or Declined. Of course, I am in favor of the prospect of resubmission after a Decline. I'm not advocating a "Make or Break" system; that's not the way the encyclopedia works. In short, "On Hold" is an unnecessary step for a submission. Nix it. Robert Skyhawk (T C) 20:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have found the hold useful on occasion but I agree that it is overused. It should only be used on articles which have a decent chance of being created within a short time. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:58, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support but... I think we should re-word the templates/wizard to explain where to find submissions. A lot of users in the IRC help channel don't know where their submission is.  It's kinda annoying to ask for their username and then have to backtrack through their contributions.  ~  Matthewrbowker  <font color=#0000aa>Say hi! 05:29, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a link in the decline message, of course - I think we should make it clearer though. Someone wanna edit Template:Afc decline and improve the clarity? I'd think, probably, we could get rid of the "and [link] was not created, and instead put another line after the "...was declined." possibly in bold, saying "See Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Name of your article" or something.  Chzz  ► 15:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Support Hold is commonly applied when it doesn't need to be. If a reviewer can solve the hold issues themselves in five minutes, then do it. "Hold" is not an excuse to be lazy. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  03:37, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think 'R' covers that; it makes it very clear that "hold on a bit, I'm working on this" - and there's no reason we can't occasionally leave something as 'R' for hours, even a day - as long as the reviewer is confident they're actively working on the thing.  Chzz  ► 09:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't R become the new H then?  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  02:22, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Support I don't see a valid purpose for the hold template since the decline is never final. Most of them end up as procedural declines anyways.  CharlieEchoTango ]] 02:23, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * support If you need to fix citations, whatever, or work with the author (and are sure the author is willing to work on it), by all means mark it as "reviewing"; otherwise, decline will do. I think though that the script and templates should be modified so that declines for copyvio/attack pages/clear advertising etc will leave a message like "welcome, here are the rules, your article violated one of these and has been declined" whereas the other declines will say "thanks for your submission, it is not suitable right now, you can find it at __ to work on it". Otherwise, I think declines can be a little bitey. Is it possible for this to be implemented? <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫  07:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with this comment, too; 'decline' should be clearer, for CV/attack/vandalism. It is misleading as it stands.  Chzz  ► 11:40, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Support A principle I have always supported + Comment I see 9 supports iirc. Time to close? -- DQ  (t)   (e)  20:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅. Now H will be treated the same as pending. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I just informed Timotheus Canens and he has updated the helper script to reflect this.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  21:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks to all, for taking the time and trouble to discuss this, in such a friendly manner  Chzz  ► 07:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should canvass the talk pages of all Wikiproject members with news of this consensus? Otherwise confusion among reviewers who are not aware of it may ensue. Robert Skyhawk (T C) 00:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have already fallen victim to this. Perhaps we should also notify developers of AfC tools such as WP:ACH. (Just saw the comment above.) Krashlandon (talk) 20:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Restoring the Hold parameter
I would like to propose that the hold parameter be reinstated with clearer use guidelines. Currently articles submissions not quite ready for mainspace are receiving comments, but they are not declined and the author is not being notified. This is resulting in duplication reviews and submissions nearly ready are remaining in the pending queue. I would like to propose that the hold parameter be used if the article meets one of these criteria:
 * 1) The article has minor style issues that could easily be addressed in 24 hours. (example: Using footnotes, divining the article into sections, citing unsourced statements in BLPs, etc.)
 * 2) The article needs administrator assistance in order for it to be accepted (example: salting and redirects)
 * 3) The article is good overall, but it lacks content in areas. However it can be addressed in 24 hours.

This would eliminate the hold backlog issue and allow submitters time to address issues, rather than the current system of leaving comments on pending submissions. Alpha Quadrant   talk    01:43, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - This was never an issue with Hold, I want it back :)  JoeGazz  ▲ 01:47, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support <b style="color:green;">MacMed</b><sup style="color:red;">talk <sub style="color:black;">stalk 02:43, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as hold is redundant to decline, and decline is not a permanent status. If there is something wrong with the article, the person can resubmitted after being declined.  There is no need to increase the backlog. Logan Talk Contributions 02:51, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support I feel as though not having this option just makes us look like dicks and might drive off users. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, shame you lot didn't appear to discuss this last month! There was quite an extensive discussion about it. I don't feel strongly about "hold" either way, but I would like to make the point that in cases 1 and 3 of the proposer's examples, we could just create the article and let the article develop in main space. There seems to be a common misconception that articles have to be perfect before they can be accepted! In particular, I'm seeing lots of submissions declined recently because they don't have inline citations, which has never been a requirement of AfC!! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:38, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If they don't have inline citations, then they are unreferenced. They need to be referenced specifically, otherwise can be deleted.  JoeGazz  ▲ 21:17, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No Joe, "unreferenced" means there are no references, not that there are no inline citations. Having inline citations is something which articles aspire to; but it is not a requirement that an article has inline citations before it can be created. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:40, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * True, it is not a requirement in mainspace, but we often require it because now is the best time to teach new editors to use them. AfC standards are higher than normal mainspace standards, it is why fewer AfC articles are deleted than regular new articles. Alpha Quadrant    talk    22:50, 26 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Neutral A lot of factors leaning me both ways... -- DQ  (t)   (e)  21:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment - OK, if you don't like it, then don't use it, but it comes in handy when you are trying to get the author to notice they have to fix some things, but it is close to acceptance. I know, we don't see many declined articles come back, it just discourages authors and they leave. So, my point, if you don't want to use it, don't, but there is NO harm in having it in there.  JoeGazz  ▲ 21:22, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Using hold will allow me (along with other Afc reviewers) to address important issues to users while giving them a certain amount of time to make major changes, so reviewers don't have to wait for the user to make edits. Crazymonkey1123 (Jacob) (Shout!) 03:46, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support: I'm not sure if this discussion is still going, but Hold sounds like a feature I would use all the time. --Nathan2055talk-review 20:58, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Editing AfC
I am in the process of reviewing an article requested for creation, and I was wondering if I am allowed to edit an article requested there. Or must I read it and accept or deny it?

Respond quickly!--<font color="#8F00DA">RayqayzaDialgaWeird2210 <font color="#FFA7A4">Please respond on my talkpage, i will respond on your talkpage.    22:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * YES you can edit it. If you can fix all the problems yourself, do so!  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  23:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * (ec) Of course you can edit it!  CharlieEchoTango ]] 23:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Be bold. Feel free to edit and improve. It's a wiki. If anyone objects, they can always undo things and/or discuss it with you, or others. Thanks!  Chzz  ► 16:23, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The Incident (video game)
Looking through Category:2010 video games, I saw Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation/The Incident (video game). After a quick search in WP:VG's RS search engine, I found loads of coverage. So, since articles don't have to actually use sources to be considered notable, but the sources have to actually exist, should this article be moved into the mainspace with this search result on the talkpage? I fell it would garner more attention there, and would be expanded quicker. Thanks, <sub style="color:#00008B;">Blake (Talk·Edits) 15:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

As a side note, why is this AfC listed at "Wikipedia talk" instead of "Wikipedia"? I was going to put the sources on the talkpage, but found out that the actual article was on the talkpage. That makes no sense. Is this how all articles are positioned? <sub style="color:#00008B;">Blake (Talk·Edits) 15:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It is in the Wikipedia talk namespace, because unregistered users can create pages there - they cannot create pages in Wikipedia namespace.


 * The criteria for making an article live isn't really just "is it notable" - although of course that is important. If a submission doesn't show notability (ie WP:VRS), then I'd normally decline it asking for the user to add references, or I'd add them myself. We generally only move things live if we thing they are reasonably well-referenced, and in a decent shape. If facts don't have inline footnoted references, it's impossible to tell which facts are original research.


 * For that specific submission - apart from the lack of refs - I would also probably edit the tone a bit, e.g.


 * There are literally hundreds of objects - doesn't need 'literally'. And is this verifiable, or original research?
 * You must avoid getting hit - this sounds too much like a manual


 * My suggestion to you, Blake, would be to boldly edit the page, adding facts referenced to reliable sources, and then move it to the live area. But it is entirely up to you - anyone can edit. If you want, feel free to just move it to the live area.


 * Hope that helps. Cheers,  Chzz  ► 17:20, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Feedback
I just discovered Article wizard/Userfeedback, which is getting plenty of comments from new users and various article attempts. Is any one here responding to user's concerns? Or even snagging an article contribution from there? By the way it probably needs archiving as it is getting big. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Didn't know about that. It's a bit pointless asking people for their feedback if we're not going to use it! We've also got WikiProject Articles for creation/feedback which I look at occasionally and try to reply sometimes. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I read through most of them (fun!) and to be honest there doesn't seem to be a great deal of use. The vast majority are either "Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes" or people complaining that their non-notable article was declined.
 * A few people did comment that the Article wizard is actually more of a slideshow of policies than a real wizard. I ran through it for the first time myself and they have a point. It uses wizard-y stuff to filter out inappropriate topics (necessary, ofc) and then just dumps you onto an edit page with some brief instructions and links to the cheatsheet and this page about referencing (which it turns out somebody had accidentally overwritten back in February – it would be interesting to see if more improperly referenced submissions appeared around that time). I think doing something to change that would help a lot. My experience is that most good submissions still need substantial copy editing for formatting, structure, tone, and especially referencing. Somehow building those things into the wizard would do a better job of training people to write good articles and reduce the workload of reviewers.
 * How, I'm not so sure. Most of the feedback that highlighted this issue asked for WYSIWYG, but obviously that's not feasible. And I get the impression that it's not really the use of markup per se that's confusing them, it's having it all dumped on them at once. Perhaps a system that breaks down an article into steps would help. So the first screen is about writing the body, and it explains basic formatting, headings, and most of all referencing (in a lot more detail than what we have now, and making use of the citation templates in the new toolbar) and tone. Then the next screen does images. And the one after that the lead – explaining its purpose and the usual formatting conventions. Then further reading, external links, and so on. We can and should be a bit more prescriptive than what you usually see in help and policy pages, I think. After all, our object is not to reflect site-wide consensus on things like formatting, it's to provide an easy path to creating an article. And for that the best approach has to be giving clear best practice instructions.
 * I'm getting away with myself though. I have no idea how to implement any changes to the Article wizard, or if what I've suggested is feasible. But I do think the feedback suggests there's room for improvement in the areas I've mentioned. — Joseph Roe <font color="#999">Tk <font color="#999">• <font color="#999">Cb, 09:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Stale drafts in Category:Declined_AfC_submissions
I posted a discussion thread at Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion#Declined AfC submissions indefinitely host page for which your input would be appreciated. Thanks. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 15:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Articles for creation/Adele Morgan
Is an older one that has not been reviewed. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 07:49, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Sometimes they remove the submission template from the top, and then it gets lost. (We used to have an edit filter to detect these ... not sure what happened to that.) I've submitted it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:58, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Automatic delivery of Template:Afc decline
As part of my WP:NPP efforts, I have been substituting Template:AFC submission/submit into AFC pages to complete the final submission step that the article creators forgot to do. This has resulted in my incorrectly receiving the Template:Afc decline notice. See my talk page. I understand that this notification is delivered automatically. Can you change the automatic delivery of Template:Afc decline so that it is delivered to the AFC submission page creator. Thanks. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 22:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, but I think it's all part of the AFC script I installed: .  <font color="#8000FF">Bejinhan  <font color="#FF00FF">talks   10:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Martin (MSGJ · talk) provided the answer on my talk page. On substituting Template:AFC submission/submit, the template adds the name of the template poster to the u parameter. See, for example, these posts In the future, I will change the u parameter to be the username of the author rather than my username after I post the template. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:24, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

New Pages and New Users
I've recently been doing some thinking (and a great deal of consultation with Philippe and James at the WMF's community department) on how to keep new users around and participating, particularly in light of Sue's March update. One of the things we'd like to test is whether the reception they get when they make their first article is key. In a lot of cases, people don't stay around; their article is deleted and that's that. By the time any contact is made, in other words, it's often too late.

What we're thinking of doing is running a project to gather data on if this occurs, how often it occurs, and so on, and in the mean time try to save as many pages (and new contributors) as possible. Basically, involved users would go through the deletion logs and through Special:NewPages looking for new articles which are at risk of being deleted, but could have something made of them - in other words, non-notable pages that are potentially notable, or spammy pages that could be rewritten in more neutral language. This would be entirely based on the judgment of the user reviewing pages - no finnicky CSD standards. These pages would be incubated instead of deleted, and the creator contacted and shepherded through how to turn the article into something useful. If they respond and it goes well, we have a decent article and maybe a new long-term editor. If they don't respond, the draft can be deleted after a certain period of time.

I know this isn't necessarily your standard fare, but with this project's role in helping newbies create articles I thought it might be intriguing to individual editors. If you're interested, read Wiki Guides/New pages, sign up and get involved; questions can be dropped on the talkpage or directed at me. Ironholds (talk) 02:02, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Finding out how to request a redirect
Maybe it's there and I'm being obtuse, but I couldn't find a link to get here (to the AFC/Redirects page) at either WP:REDIRECT or Help:Redirect. It took me quite awhile to track down the page that would let me request that a redirect be created. It seems like that should be a pretty obvious thing to include on both those pages. 63.104.174.146 (talk) 19:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Help:Redirect is designed for new users and so it is definitely relevant there (I've added a sentence). Redirect is more technical, and designed for more experienced editors, so not sure about that page. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:46, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Categorize when moving to mainspace
Just a thought as I've just run into this. Shouldn't it be advised somewhere that when an article is moved into mainsapce at least one relevant category (not just a stub template) should be added? Otherwise sooner or later some AWB user is going to tag it as uncategorized and eventually someone who is possibly less familiar with he subject matter will come along and categorize it. Just a thought. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Backlog cleared
With a lot of elbow grease, we have finally cleared the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Submissions&action=purge, thank-you to anybody who helped! Wikipedian2 (talk) 00:59, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

How do I request a reassessment page creation?
I want to create this page: Good article reassessment/Joseph McCarthy/1. How do I do it? 128.59.169.46 (talk) 18:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Create an account, this project is really just for content articles. — Joseph Roe <font color="#999">Tk <font color="#999">• <font color="#999">Cb, 19:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Unref'd submissions; message
I had an idea;

For any submissions with no inline references at all, to say to the author (in essence), "Hey - you submitted an AFC, and we'll try and help with it, but it has no inline refs; it'd help if you added some (like THIS)"

I drafted up User:Chzz/afc unreferenced.

I thought I'd boldly try it out, and I'm logging my efforts on User:Chzz/afc unreferenced log.

I'm hoping this will help without putting anyone off;

I intend to try it out, check results on these current few, and - if successful - to suggest a bot, which will say,

IF someone submits an AFC, AND it has no "&lt;ref>" (in any CaSe),
 * IF they have no talk page - give 'em a welcome;

Give help and advice on references.

Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions how to make it better? Cheers,  Chzz  ► 01:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It sounds well thought out, and a good idea. My76Strat (talk) 01:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It's worth trying, I suppose, but if an unsourced article has got this far its author has already ignored the page in the article wizard which clearly says "If your article does not cite reliable, independent sources, it may be deleted" and clicked "My proposed article has good sources". At a certain point you have to wonder if the message is even worth giving any more.   jroe  tkcb  05:19, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, absolutely. But, a message on their talk *might* have more effect than something during a dialogue. IDK about you, but when I am faced with a thing like the "Wizard", I mostly click 'OK', 'Next', 'Yes', 'I agree', without reading any of it. We'll see, anyway; I'll try a few - I'm logging them in User:Chzz/afc unreferenced log, so anyone/everyone is most welcome to see if it is effective, make suggestions, tell me to stop, etc. etc. Cheers,  Chzz  ► 10:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I've done this on around 40 current submissions, to try it; please, anyone/everyone see User:Chzz/afc unreferenced, check if it seems helpful and if I'm doing it right
 * found errors in the template User:Chzz/afc unreferenced and improved it]]; that great; thanks. Anyone, please do same.
 * suggested (on my talk) to note on the AFC that I'd advised the user; that makes sense. I will add an to those existing ones (v soon), and will work to add them whenever doing this.

Best,  Chzz  ► 22:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I just came across a submission (Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bryan Spencer, which I declined, but anyway) which had a no inline citations but a list of references at the end. I'm of the opinion that that style is OK for stubby articles, and I think that's generally supported by WP:CITE, so maybe you could build in an exception for those kind of cases?   jroe  tkcb  11:42, 7 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I think this is a great step in the right direction. There are a lot of cases where providing some additional feedback beyond a template rejection of the submission would really help those submitting articles to AfC. It is not uncommon to have editors who have gotten a rejection to end up in the help channel totally confused as to what exactly was wrong with the article they submitted. More messages, either in the form of comments to the submission, or a template like this that can go to the person's talk page would be a welcome improvement. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  06:50, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Seems to be working very well. <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫  07:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * In the case of that type of short article with refs just listed at the end, if I reviewed it, I'd change them to inline references. I don't see any harm asking the user (nicely) to please help with that - even for a stub. It'll need doing in the end.  Chzz  ► 04:36, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I just had a look at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Decline Effect (disambiguation) and noticed it had been tagged with this. However in this case this is incorrect. Disambiguation pages should never contain references per WP:MOSDAB. This might prove potentially confusing to a new editor and be sending mixed messages. However in general I think this is a useful exercise. -France3470 (talk) 23:47, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * France3470, thanks; good catch. I will amend things; how about, if EITHER the AFC contains (case-insensitive), OR the page is < 500 characters (say), I'll skip it. Does that sound good?  Chzz  ►  20:28, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good plan for dab pages. However I am not sure about amending the < 500 characters; all other pages, no matter their size are required to provide citations. I would therefore keep templating these. In addition to exempting pages with a or  template might it also be possible to exclude pages with 'disambiguation' in the title. From my experience new editors sometimes forget to include the template. (I just requested a similar exclusion for edit filter 402 (New article without references), see Edit filter/False positives/Reports). Thanks, France3470 (talk) 01:31, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed, yes; makes sense. I've added that to the 'things to improve' - I intend to get it a bit better, before automating.  Chzz  ► 16:03, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

There should probably be a different message for users who do a blank submission. I'm thinking something extremely simple, either pointing them back to their submission with instructions to add content and references, or pointing them to Requested articles to list the topic as a requested article.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Please see Bots/Requests for approval/ChzzBot IV  Chzz  ► 17:36, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Help may be on the way... hopefully
I've put up a little advert for the project on the community bulletin board. Hopefully this will be bring in some extra volunteers to help keep the backlog down. This project is very much in line with the current "Resolution from the Foundation Board" to bring in more new editors and help retain them, so I think this is also a good time to draw in supporters and recruit more people to this project. -- &oelig; &trade; 12:13, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Mhm; I tried this. We do need help, that's for sure.  Chzz  ► 20:36, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Essays
I think the 'essay' decline option in AFC submission/comments is worded a bit poorly: "This request reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. Submissions should be based on fact rather than opinions or original research. Thank you."

For one, it's very curt and unlike most of the others doesn't contain suggestions (or links to suggestions) on how to improve it, even though many of the submissions declined as essays are promising topics for articles, just written and formatted inappropriately. Also, essays are usually based on fact – the actual problem with them is sourcing, NPOV and encyclopaedic tone. So I suggest rewording it alone these lines: "This request reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. Submissions should summarise information in secondary, reliable sources and not contain opinions or original research. Please write about the topic from a neutral point of view in encyclopedic style. Thank you."

That should hopefully better get across why essay-like submissions are declined and how they can be improved.  jroe  tkcb 09:15, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I don't think anyone would oppose if you went ahead and changed the wording. -- &oelig; &trade; 02:52, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have.  jroe  tkcb  10:23, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Strange AfD
Hi there, I have no experience with the AfC process, so I'm not sure how articles are usually declined, but I have never seen one sent to AfD, so I'm assuming that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/DR VIVIAN EDWARDS OAM is not the correct way to do it. At the very least it should be at MfD, not AfD, as it's not even in article space. Your help in tidying this up would be appreciated (or alternatively telling me I'm incorrect and the AfD is in the right place). Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 15:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I have procedurally closed that discussion. Thanks for letting us know. Logan Talk Contributions 15:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that, much appreciated. Jenks24 (talk) 15:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Just a note
I'm not sure if it's a bug with EarwigBot, but lately copyvios have been going undetected by the bot. Before declining as advertisements or unsourced, please run a quick google search if it looks anything like it could have been grabbed off a website. Thanks. <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫  21:28, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Erm, this is a rather old thread, but I realized I never actually informed the project that EarwigBot's copyvio task has been down for months, and probably will be down for a while. Note that we are having problems with Yahoo's search API (CorenSearchBot suffers from this as well) and I'm not sure how I'll be able to fix this currently. However, it will be resolved in the future, just not now. Thanks. &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  19:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Templates for creation
Where should such requests be submitted? 203.198.25.249 (talk) 10:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Here.  jroe  tkcb  10:51, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. 203.198.25.249 (talk) 12:58, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Move request template
See here for how AFC submission/submit, the standard recommendation for move requests of userspace drafts (So you made a userspace draft) includes a rather confusing "Warning: this page should probably be located at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/..." message. Can we sort this out in some way? Maybe with an extra parameter to indicate it's a request relating to a userspace draft, which parameter suppresses the warning? Rd232 talk 22:57, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Safe Planet


I accepted this via AFC (in January), but on the talk page, a user has raised concerns that it is overly dependent on primary sources; I think that is true. So, if anyone can help improve it, trim out anything inappropriate, etc. - please do. Best,  Chzz  ► 03:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Something's not quite right
I sometimes edit Wikipedia anonymously, when I'm not using my own laptop. This also gives me some insight into how regular anonymous editors must feel. A few days ago I got a request to create a redirect created (Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Universität München) declined twice. While apparently I should have requested this at Articles for creation/Redirects‎, that wasn't at all clear to me from the article creation wizard. If I truly were a new editor it would have been quite off-putting to have my request simply denied with a short "try again here". Wouldn't it be better if we were a little less bureaucratic about this? —Ruud 22:22, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree, and Template:AfC cleared should not have been used, as it is intended to be used for copyright and BLP violations. Alpha Quadrant    talk    16:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I recently came across a redir request like that and there is no reason not to accept it when it is a valid redirect. I use afchelper4 to accept or decline and it has an option to mark as a redirect class page. After creation you only have to remove the references bit manually. After I accepted the request I left a note at the talk page of the user that created it to point him to the right venue to request redirects. Jarkeld (talk) 23:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yuck, thats not pretty. Has somebody discussed this with the users who declined the redirect already? Yoenit (talk) 07:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Bureaucracy at its finest. I've told people before to just accept these redirects (and then leave a nice note on the IP or new user's talk page pointing them to the "right" page in the future), but apparently people don't have common sense these days. Ridiculous, and we're trying to "help" these new users? / ƒETCH COMMS  /  18:37, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I left talkbacks at User:Tashif and User:Happysailors talkpage. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 09:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Submissions in userspace
There is a request by User:Mabdul for a bot to move AfC submissions from userspace into project space. As this request didn't seem to involve many users from the WikiProject, I thought I would raise the matter here. What do people think is the best approach to this?

I have a few questions: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:21, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Why do AfC submissions end up in userspace?
 * They ending up there, because helpers in the IRC give regular the advice to place the afc code on their page, before ending up CSD the moved drafts. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Are users encouraged to submit their userspace draft to AfC? If so, is this a good idea?
 * see above <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * What is the advantage of moving these submissions?
 * All are on the same place. It is really common that the pages were moved by reviewers at the moment. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Would it not cause confusion to new editors to have their articles unexpectedly and unilaterally moved?
 * Create a standard-template that can/should be placed on the talk page, explaining the move. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Is moving them so time consuming that a bot is needed to do this?
 * Don't know, but why not having a bot doing "stupid" tasks? It is not time consuming, but the bot will move really every page. The bot could also place the talkpage-template which I proposed above. At least moving every page by hand would cost - say 30sec - the sum is the saving task. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I placed my comments above! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I will implement template but I can't find it, fee free to copy it to User:Petan-Bot/ Petrb (talk) 18:40, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * is the code the users put at the top of their page.(Maybe if it is not at the top, move it to the top!) One more idea: remove after the move the userspace-draft template (also really common). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 11:00, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I have one more reason for my proposed move: the "review" link (after installing tools) isn't working and thus I have to do this by hand! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 12:15, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I wanted template of message 80.188.9.191 (talk) 19:14, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Petan-Bot/message/move-afc improve / fix Petrb (talk) 20:19, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Cliff Richard Songs With Lyrics
can you do a section with cliff richard songs with lyrics plz — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.103.4.32 (talk) 10:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * We don't add Lyrics normally to articles, that's not Wikipedias purpose. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:45, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * WP:NOTLYRICS avs5221(talk&#124;contrib) 14:54, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Decline
Is it right to decline for not using inline citations. I have seen people comment but they didn't mention WP:REFB or WP:REFBEGIN or WP:REFSTART. -- Puffin  Lets talk! 19:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you were asking by my declined of Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Enter_youNasir_Danladi_Bako,_Kogunan_Sokotor_new_article_name_here. Look at the draft again: I can't even recognize what exactly the article is about since the style is totally er, say rubbish. I chose to use a custom message instead of saying no! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 19:15, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Articles do not necessarily have to use inline citations. They are only necessary if the information contained in them is likely to be challenged. That "chance" decreases the shorter the article becomes. Per WP:CHALLENGE:
 * "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation."


 * That said, we should do a better job of new editors in the right direction. avs5221(talk&#124;contrib) 14:52, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Template:AFC redir
This template has been nominated for deletion. This was used to display reasons for declining a redirect request. Is this still in use or has it been replaced by another template? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:56, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ Responded at the appropriate venue. Logan Talk Contributions 01:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ Responded at the appropriate venue. Logan Talk Contributions 01:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Changing the preload for AFC/R
I would like to change the preload for redirect requests to include a stand in title, so that instead of empty requests being "Redirect request: " it would instead be "Redirect request: Name of Redirect Here". My hope is that the change would both reduce the number of redirect requests that fail to include the name they want redirected, and would also make processing incomplete requests easier. As the change may not be obvious to the regulars at the page until a bunch of requests to redirect Name of Redirect Here show up, I wanted to post it here to seek comment and give people a heads up about the idea. I'm also very open to a better stand in for the redirect, it isn't about what goes there so much as having something at all there. Also, I would like to do the same for categories, Category Name Here. Monty <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  20:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I've made the above change, using Name to be Redirected Here. I will see how it goes over before trying it with the categories request. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  19:01, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

River Park FC
River Park FC needs it own Wikipediapage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.243.229.219 (talk) 17:50, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Adele Morgan
I added some references to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Adele Morgan, but I don't think notability has been established. I could be wrong, though. Could someone else take a look at the article? <font face="Times">Eastmain (talk • contribs) 19:08, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Page is messy
The page Articles for creation/Redirects is a bit messy. --84.61.162.29 (talk) 07:10, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Assuming you are referring to some of the "requests", I've mostly cleaned it up, thanks for point it out. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  07:33, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Mik
Please create a disambiguation page at Mik! --84.61.162.29 (talk) 17:52, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I started a proposal
Please check Village_pump_(miscellaneous) and support this proposal! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:22, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

please i need help in these java question
discuss how java programming languagues differs from procedurals programming such as pascal and c. 1.classes 2.objects 3.attributes 4.methods 5.pirvate,protected,public 6.encapsulation 7.interface 8.inheritance 9.polymorphism — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andersonelnino (talk • contribs) 03:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Try the reference desk. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 12:17, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Ocean Village Gibraltar
Hello I accepted the article Ocean Village Gibraltar, because I could not find any obvious problems with it. However I am still unsure whether it really should have been accepted. Could someone give a quick look over? Vivio Testa rossa Talk 22:50, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:ACTRIAL
A discussion at the above linked page is taking place on how to implement this in the most user-friendly way. A big part of the implementation will be AfC, so input from the regulars here would be greatly appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 20:28, 13 August 2011 (UTC)


 * AFC typically gets...what, about 50 articles per day? If that. According to these stats, when this trial begins, we might expect, or more. Just sayin' - because, I think it's important people realise.  Chzz  ► 14:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * AfC will get extremely backlogged if those stats are correct. We need to prepare to go through submissions as fast as possible for this then. --Nathan2055talk-review 18:01, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I've done a little practice at AfC; except for removing copyvios and actually accepting articles (which is rather satisfying), I can usually hit the same speeds I would at NPP. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 07:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Header trouble
I've noticed several times that the AfC header doesn't correctly turn to the created header, instead loading the misplaced header. This happens primarily when you accept something without adding the reviewing tag, it also just happened with the reviewing tag. Could someone fix this? Thanks, Nathan2055talk-review 21:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)


 * From looking at the template code, it has to do with the namespace the submission was created in, not whether it was marked as "being reviewed". For example (after going through submissions in your contributions), this submission uses the created header because 5 is set, meaning the submission was created in the WT: namespace. This submission uses the misplaced header because 2 is set (2 is the User: namespace; it was created as a user draft then moved into AfC by, who apparently doesn't fix that parameter). It has nothing to do with being reviewed or not. I see a few solutions:
 * We can get rid of the ns parameter altogether and merge AFC submission/created with AFC submission/misplaced, perhaps to say something like "This submission is either misplaced, or it was recently created."
 * We can ignore the problem. Does it really matter? The template is supposed to be removed as soon as the submission is created – it's not supposed to linger – so it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
 * We can go fix Petan-Bot so he moves submissions correctly.
 * Best, &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  21:39, 16 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, another thing. I noticed you tag redirects for deletion after you create submissions. I'm not sure why, though – as far as I know, it helps the creator keep track of their submission, because they can just follow the redirect to the mainspace, and it helps us keep track of the number of created submissions by counting the subpages of WT:AFC that are redirects. Thanks. &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  21:49, 16 August 2011 (UTC)


 * As I discussed in the IRC with Earwig: I see no real problem. We shouldn't neither fix Pentan-bot (since there is no real "bug") nor should we change the AFC process. I think one of these two template-messages (depends on the ns-parameter) should be merged into the other one since both saying the same: The article has been already moved successfully or the template is misplaced at the wrong space/place. (hint: maybe a new "task" for Pentan-Bot would be either remove the template userspacedraft from page it didn't move and the AFC template which is in article space, maybe also a move task of new AFC submissions-requests [on already declined drafts] to the top of the page) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The reason that template is even used is to preload the talk page to add a banner and quality rating, and inform the user. You're right about the redirects, I'll leave them next time (which is probably now, considering we're highly backlogged). Getting back to the discussion, I think that the bot should be fixed. It could take a bit of work, but at least we wouldn't have to copy and paste wikicode every time we approve a submission. --Nathan2055talk-review 16:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * So why not merging the templates? Most reviewers are using also a JS-helper-tool and thus tis is making all the work for the reviewer. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 17:32, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * You can find the helper script at User talk:Timotheus Canens/afchelper4.js, by the way (perhaps better publicising this is something we could do in preparation for WP:ACTRIAL -- improve reviewer retention?) joe&bull;roet&bull;c 17:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that merging the templates is a potential Good Idea™ that should be given more consideration. &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  20:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and merged the two submission templates. Feel free to correct if I broke something. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 13:46, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I notice that this merge was reverted on 28 September. I also tweaked the logic in the code, so that only submissions created in mainspace will be characterised as misplaced. Is this working okay now? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:58, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Alpha Quadrant thought it is important to know the differences and thus reverted my changes. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 08:44, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Alpha Quadrant should probably have discussed it here. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:47, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We discussed this in IRC XD <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 09:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Put submissions in Wikipedia namespace instead of Wikipedia talk
You know, I was moving some userspace submissions the other day, and ran across the fact that the template tries to move the submission to the Wikipedia namespace instead of Wikipedia talk. This gave me an idea: place submissions in Wikipedia instead of Wikipedia talk! This would allow us to use the Wikipedia namespace for submissions, and discuss problems at Wikipedia talk! Does anyone else think this is a good idea? --Nathan2055talk-review 16:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Unregistered users can't create articles in the main Wikipedia: namespace. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 17:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ That makes since. Thanks, Nathan2055talk-review 18:06, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Hold restoration revisited
Well, it looks like the old comment to restore the hold parameter has gone dry. I'd like to reopen the request, considering WP:ACTRIAL will raise backlog levels like crazy. I'd like to request another discussion to restore hold, however (with note to the first discussion) there will now be three options: Placing a submission on hold will remove it from the main submissions category, placing it in a new category. If the problems are fixed within the time given, the article is either accepted (if admin assistance was needed) or placed back in the queue of submissions (other issues). If the article is not fixed and re-submitted within the time period given, it will be auto-declined. This will allow users to place submissions on hold easily. There have been many times in which I had to keep an article under review until an admin deleted a redirect or declined a article because it needed small edits. This would help all AfC users in responding to submissions. Thanks, Nathan2055talk-review 18:41, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Minor issues (correct in 24 hours)
 * Admin assistance required (no time given)
 * Major issues (correct in one week)
 * Updated idea: The new variation on hold will be sub-categories meant to sort declined submissions. The messages left will be edited significantly to sound less as harsh, link to policies, and include broader topics (like external link policy violations). --Nathan2055talk-review 23:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Support with minor tweaks. The new category's name should be Category:On hold AFC submissions and it should sort the entries by the remaining days for fixing the issues. This will make it easy for reviewers to check whether the issues with the submission are still valid and to decline the unfixed ones. If admin assistance is required, than it will go under the letter A. This way resubmitting isn't needed, as the reviewers can easily check which on hold submissions will expire. EXPAND: And if a submission is placed on hold, than the creator should be notified. Sir Armbrust  <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Talk to me  <sub style="color:#008000;">Contribs  10:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC) (EXPAND: 12:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC))
 * I thought the idea was just to decline the proposed article instead of placing it on hold, always accepting that the author or any one else can resubmit it. That is why we don't really need a hold category.  Instead of a hold category, perhaps we can have a number of other categories that will indicate what steps are needed to get the article to the standard required.  eg no-ref, no claim of importance, no context.  So they could classify depending on the declined reason, but perhaps we can include a number of reasons in the decline, and then it could hit a number of cats. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:55, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose I am not sure what this adds to the current system. It's a misconception that a declining a submission that could be accepted with some work is either permanent or "dickish". The template placed on the submitter's talk page when an article is declined makes it quite clear that it isn't final, and they can resubmit after making changes. In my experience most substantial submissions get reviewed at least twice, so it's abundantly clear that this is understood. As Chzz argued originally a hold status only confuses this, implying a decline is "final" when that's neither technically true (AFAIK, we never stop people resubmitting) or in the spirit of Wikipedia. I'm also not impressed with the three circumstances where you (and Alpha Quadrant above) think it will be used, either:
 * Articles with minor stylistic issued should just be accepted. If the submitter or the reviewer doesn't get around to fixing them, someone else will soon enough. Lack of sections/footnotes/internal links etc. is no reason to stop good, well-sourced content from being in the encyclopaedia.
 * Having to delete a redirect or something might delay a submission being accepted for a few hours, yes, but this happens in so rarely that surely a comment on the submission and a note on the user's talk page isn't too much of a hassle?
 * "Major issues" encompasses all of the things we currently decline for, again raising the issue of what exactly the difference between a hold and a decline would be
 * So let's just (continue to) KISS. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 14:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Joey Roe pretty much sums up how I feel about this. I worry that, considering the potentially massive increase in submissions that we're about to get, adding in hold will only make things more complicated and difficult for us as reviewers. By leaving an article on hold, you are enforcing a time limit until... what, exactly? A hold expiring does not cause the submission to be deleted, nor does it make it any more difficult for the author to fix it and resubmit, so why set a time limit at all? If you want to use hold as a sort of "light decline", representing articles that might be able to be accepted, but requiring slight tweaks (the "Minor issues" part), then it makes more sense to use subcats of Category:Declined AfC submissions as suggested by Graeme Bartlett. I actually think this is a really good idea. The category is simply huge (26,548 pages at last check) and segregating them into subcats would make it much easier to see which ones are viable as real articles. &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  21:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, read my new idea up top. We will have the sub-cats, and include much more decline options, which will be softer and explain more policies. --Nathan2055talk-review 23:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree some of the decline reasons should be rewritten. There's not really any need for a big discussion about that though. Just pick one you think needs improving, do it, maybe quickly run it by here first, and then edit the template. I've done as much in the past. As for sorting them into categories, that seems like a clerical thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it won't have any effect on how reviewers review or submitters submit. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 07:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The template would have to be updated to auto-sort into categories. One other thing: I read in another discussion about adding a button to the declined template to automatically add the pending tag. How hard would this be? --Nathan2055talk-review 21:10, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Is that useful? Are there any reviewers not using the JS helper? <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 15:42, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * @User:Joey Roe: that's not fully correct: read the story behind Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Dysprosium_Software and the talkpage of the static IP... <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 15:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that submission did pop into my head when I wrote that (I declined it several times, you'll notice). "We very rarely stop people resubmitting", is perhaps what I should have said. That one was definitely an anomaly! :P joe&bull;roet&bull;c 15:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Ouch! That's an interesting submission. In response to mabdul, I didn't use the JS helper until you gave me a link (yes, it's awesome). I don't see how the submission comes in though...maybe it's just me. --Nathan2055talk-review 21:28, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we should set up a better guide for the reviewers what tools are available and how to submit them correctly and / or by hand (e.g. that submissions should be moved and that we have a bot for such tasks). WP:FFU has a better guide (for example) and we need/should expand the review tool for the FFU page at least for declining, setting on hold and/or after successfully uploaded image. (then only giving the tool the correct file-name). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 12:36, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should also generate/create templates for talkpages for informing the submitter, we can add after accepting or declining redirects and categories (similar to the FFU talk-templates). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 13:30, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense
Is there a way to decline something for being patent nonsense? See Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sdkfjsldkjflksdjflksdf for what I mean. I declined it with a joke template, but that doesn't really do it; if that was in mainspace, it would be a clear G1. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 20:41, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You can always use a custom reason to say anything you like. Though I have thought several times that a templated nonsense/test decline reason would come in handy. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 22:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * That's what I'm thinking; it happens enough on NPP that we have WP:CSD, so it makes sense to have it here too. The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 23:51, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * this suit everyone? If so, I'll add it to the documentation and ask Tim to add it to the script. <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫ 01:41, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * That does work, yes. But personally, I think complete nonsense like that with no meaningful content whatsoever can just be tagged with db-g1. Part of the reason we decline things is to allow the submitter to come back and revise, but with something like G1, there's really no point keeping it at all. Keep Category:Declined AfC submissions free of totally pointless stuff and so on (similar to how we delete copyvio submissions after a certain amount of time). &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  02:55, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a very fine line sometimes between complete nonsense and what could at least potentially be test edits. The example above is clearly the former, but in my time on NPP I've come across a couple of articles that at first consisted of a couple phrases of gibberish, but when I tagged it G1 the author requested it be moved to their sandbox for test edits.  The rule I usually use on NPP is that if it has a coherent title, I tag it G2, and I move it to the author's userspace if they request it; if the title is something like How to Eat a Scorpion While it is Mating, it's G1.  I imagine that would work fairly well here as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 03:51, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me, except "patent nonsense" might be a bit unexpected since you've given it the variable "test". Perhaps something along the lines "This submission appears to be a test or is otherwise unintelligible. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 06:49, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Stub Request
May a stub for 'Jack Moses' be created to link in the Jack Moses entry on the 'Gundagai' article page thanks. Jack Moses (and literature) are highly significant to Gundagai's story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.134.117.32 (talk) 21:52, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe you should go to Requested articles. This page is for discussing improvements to the process of creating draft articles via the article wizard. Also, in the future, please use the "New section" or "+" button at the top of the screen to add a talk page comment. Thanks, Nathan2055talk-review 02:57, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Bot to enforce quick-fail criteria
I've only started reviewing AfC submissions recently, but I've noticed there are quite a lot of articles submitted which fall into the quick fail criteria. It wouldn't be difficult to code a bot to look at new AfC submissions and decline them if:
 * The submission is blank except for the AfC submission template.
 * The submission is not in English (using some sort of tool like http://whatlanguageisthis.com/ or something similar)
 * There are zero references in the article, and it is not a redirect or a dab page.
 * The proposed article title already exists and is not a redirect.

Determining if the submission is a copyright violation is a bit more difficult, as evidenced by the recent problems with User:CorenSearchBot. Ideally, the bot would wait at least an hour after the last edit to the article before declining it, to prevent it from declining articles that are still in progress. I have a bot account and easily could code this if there is support for it, or if there is already someone running a bot which crawls through new submissions, it might make sense just to add it to that bot's task list. Let me know your thoughts. <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> comment 23:02, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * No.4 can lead to articles being rejected that have the same name as an article, but aren't a duplicate, just someone or something with the same name. Jarkeld (talk) 23:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think #1 is straightforward, and there is no potential downside to it. #2 seems fine as long as it could do it reliably. #3 is more problematic, How would it handle external links, references that are not inline citations using the ref code, and inline external links that are intended to be references? While often a lack of a references section with proper inline citation is a symptom of an article that will be rejected, sometimes an article is in a reasonable enough shape that it makes sense for a reviewer to fix issues and approve the submission. For instance, if the inline external links show the subject is notable, and there are no other major issues, its simple to just convert the links into proper references and approve. Finally, there is always a chance that a reviewer will decide to reference an article that looks good and that really should be an article. #4, I think is best reviewed by a human, though perhaps it could add a comment to the submission to flag the issue as a potential quick fail. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  23:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think those are all good points. I agree that for #3, the bot shouldn't decline an article that has any external links anywhere in the article, or any amount of text in the References section (apart from what the wizard pre-loads in there by default).  You both hit on some good points for #4, and so I agree that it would be best for the bot to leave a comment rather than declining the submission in that case.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> prattle 23:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, it looks like there are some Python tools out there for language detection, so I wouldn't have to rely on a website. I would want to test the tools out pretty thoroughly first though.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> speak 23:33, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * <ramble warning: it's super late, but I really wanted to give my thoughts here>
 * I really don't like the idea of bots declining submissions, even if only for "quick-fail" criteria. #1 is probably the least controversial; perhaps this might work, but I don't think it's necessary (will explain why in a sec). #2 is not always going to be accurate – sometimes an article will contain a lot of non-English text, causing an automated detector to think it's another language, even though there's salvageable content inside. As mentioned above, #3 has too much room for error, and it can be difficult to detect "redirect or dab page[s]" by bot (our submitters will never stop thinking of more creative ways to propose redirects incorrectly, but this shouldn't stop us from creating them!). Finally, #4 is simply a poor idea – often times we'll just move it to a different title and leave a hatnote at the original title. I see no reason for a bot to go in and leave a comment, because AFC submission already mentions if the proposed title already exists.
 * Anyways, the main point I'm trying to make is that these are "quick-fail" criteria, after all – why automate something that is already easy? A purely blank submission is something that takes less than 10 seconds to decline after a quick check to make sure we aren't missing anything; it's especially quick with Tim's wonderful helper script. The more complicated the bot's criteria (although theoretically the more helpful), the more work that needs to go into developing and testing it, not to mention the fact that it's way more likely to screw up. If the bot is going to be auto-declining anything, I would at least want to have some way to review its work to make sure it doesn't make any mistakes, but that would just add to the backlog! If the bot instead leaves notes on the submission (e.g. "this article lacks sources"), I simply don't see the point; any reviewer will be able to determine that rather quickly after opening the page. There's only one situation I can think of where a bot leaving notes on the submission is useful, and that's copyvio detection:
 * "Determining if the submission is a copyright violation is a bit more difficult..." now, I realize progress has been incredibly slow, but I'm still alive :). While EarwigBot's AfC copyvio task is still down, I have not forgotten about him, so rest assured that I will get this working eventually, even if it kills me.
 * Best, &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  08:19, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments. I understand your hesitation but I disagree on most points.  Regarding language detection, I would be doing some extensive testing and setting the threshold such that there is virtually no chance of false positives.  And, I think you'd be surprised how well a bot could be programmed to detect redirects and dab pages, even improperly formatted ones.  I'm not aware of how AFC submission mentions that the title already exists.  I know it gives a link to the proposed article title in super-tiny font, is that what you're referring to?  I still maintain that having a comment below the submission would be far more visible for both reviewer and submitter.  The main reason this is being proposed is because there may be a very large increase in the number of submissions made after this trial starts.  These statistics show that non-autoconfirmed users create about 700 articles per day on average.  If only 25% of them decide to use AfC when they realize they can't create the article themselves, that would just about triple the number of articles proposed here each day, and I seriously doubt that the number of AfC reviewers will triple.  If a bot can filter out the most egregious submissions, this will help enormously to thin out the backlog so that human reviewers will have more time to review serious submissions that actually have a chance of being accepted.  Better to be pro-active than reactive when the shit hits the fan.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#5a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> communicate 16:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I can understand what you're saying. I was referring to both the link and the "Warning: A page with this title already exists. Please make sure that this proposed article does not already exist or that it does not need to be moved to a different title." message that appears near the bottom (see here). As for the main reason, I understand why ACTRIAL would make something like this helpful, but it seems to have been rejected by WMF (?), so that might make this less urgent? &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  00:51, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, I have struck that part of the bot request where the bot would post a warning comment when a page with the same title already exists. Thanks for that.  As for ACTRIAL, you're right that it is most likely not going to happen as originally planned.  However, WMF is considering other changes which could potentially increase the traffic at AfC.  See Article creation workflow.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> express 05:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Are we doing enough to respect the privacy of living people?
One of the key roles of BLP policy is to protect the privacy of living persons. To the extent that a person is not in the public eye (notable), we don't publish information about them, which respects their privacy. In article space, there are multiple levels of process designed to remove BLP content that unjustifiably intrudes on a person's privacy. First, attack articles are deleted under CSD G10. Then articles which fail to identify how the subject is important are deleted under CSD A7. Articles that fail to include a reliable source are deleted by a BLPPROD. If the article has made it this far, the article is assessed for Notability, and if it is found lacking it may be PRODed, or sent to AfD, (where even if there is a lack of consensus, the results in a delete). There are additional steps, but past this point, and AFC submission would likely be in article space and subject to the same reviews as an article that had started there. AFC has only the protection of G10, and the fact that most submissions are in talk space and automatically no indexed. While no indexed articles wont show up in a google search, they will show up in an on-wiki search, and are fully accessible to anyone who can find the URL. I'm concerned that no-indexing the articles does not adequately deal with the privacy concern that drives the process in article space. The articles are gone to everyone but admins, while failed AFC submissions are available to anyone who knows how to look. Should we be doing something more at AFC to respect people's privacy? Monty <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  02:57, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that similar concerns could be raised regarding copyvios. If they're RevDel'd/deleted everywhere else, why should they only be blanked here?  We might have to revise policy to restrict some actions to speedy deletion and some to regular reviewing. Logan Talk Contributions 02:36, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree, it's strange that at AfC and AfC alone unsuitable BLPs and copyvios are blanked (not even that for most BLPs) rather than deleted. I'd be interested to learn how that came about in the first place. As far as I can tell, fixing it would just be a case of using a deletion template (but which one? PROD, to give submitters the opportunity to fix it? MfD because it's outside of mainspace? A new one for AfCs specifically?) in all those cases where articles are currently blanked, and adding to the instructions for reviewers that attack pages/unrescuable BLPs should get the same treatment. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 07:53, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, they are deleted, but after a while (was it six months? or one month?) in case the nominator wants to rewrite the article, in which case the offending revisions would be RevDel'd. Ask for details on deleting these pages, I think he went through and deleted quite a few several months ago. No MfDs, please; that only adds to confusion. / ƒETCH  COMMS  /  03:59, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * There are a fairly large number of submissions that have been rejected as copyvios but not deleted, though many have had the copyvio blanked/edited out. See Category:AfC submissions declined as copyright violations. About 500 articles, half from when articles were located in /submissions/. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  21:43, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps all failed AfC submissions should be automatically deleted (probably via CSD G6) after a certain amount of time of sitting idle. An adminbot would be prefereable for such a task, so that CAT:CSD doesn't get overwhelmed with requests.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> chat 22:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Please see the most recent discussion regarding this topic. There is only consensus to delete submissions that meet G1, G2, G3, G10, and G12. We CSD these articles as we find them. Alpha Quadrant    talk    22:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's time to see if consensus has changed? <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> gab 01:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The Earwig is deleting the old copyvios (progress here). Snottywong, I think it would be good to have old submissions there because I've often seen people after several months (and even over a year) return to a declined submission and then improve it to a passable article. It's also good for record-keeping and whatnot. Perhaps after a very long while (at least over a year) they could be deleted, and I don't recall what the consensus currently is for old userspace drafts (six months? a year?) but it should probably be the same as that for consistency. In fact, we really should phase out the whole userspace draft thing for new users and just remove it from the article wizard. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  01:34, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Ernest Smith
Is a Sierra Leonean born in the west part of Freetown. Ernest Smith is the Publisher and CEO of the Sierra Leone View online Newspaper based in continental Europe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dudunest (talk • contribs) 18:40, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Abuse of process?
98.116.126.133 has recently engaged in what I'd call an abuse of process: In order to create articles on people, he does not use the AfC process, but he requests a redirect from (person's name) to (organization with which person is associated) - and as soon as the redirect is created, he expands it to a stand-alone article. The most egregious example is Karlee Pérez, where he replaced a redirect with a version that had previously been rejected for creation. (This also shows that 98.116 is aware of the correct process and deliberately doesn't use it.) What should be done? Simply turn the articles on non-notable people back into redirects? In any case, I'd ask the other editors who create such redirects for 98.116 to keep an eye on them. Huon (talk) 14:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think now the articles are created the only thing to do is PROD/AfD them. I wonder why they are going to all that trouble rather than just creating an account, though. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 18:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll never understand it myself. User accounts are actually more private and more anonymous than IP addresses.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> spill the beans 19:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * This is surely gaming the system though. The IP submitted an article via AfC here, it was declined (by me), and then the IP immediately requested a redirect here.  Once the redirect was granted, the IP copied and pasted their AfC submission into the redirect.  Seems like an awfully long way around just to create an article, registering an account would surely be easier, but gaming the system should not be tolerated.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> spill the beans 20:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Bot requests.
A bot that will affect the AFC process is being discussed for approval, your input is appreciated. Bots/Requests for approval/KuduBot 4. Cliff (talk) 08:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

No idea how this works but ...
I have no idea how this works, but this proposed article, Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Gayot is a work of plagiarism. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 00:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

✅ Taken care of. <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> confess 00:31, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Review request

 * Moved from Articles for creation &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yuriipetrovich/jasonsmart I written the article here. Can it be reviewed by someone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yuriipetrovich (talk • contribs)
 * You received some brief feedback on this article in January 2010, see Requests for feedback/Archive/19. Did you see that and act on it yet? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I've added about 8 news articles from 1st tier Kyrgyz news sources this morning. Plus notes from the OSCE (A diplomatic body) and the Jigorku Kenesh (Parliament of Kyrgyzstan)The majority is not in English, but in Kyrgyz or Russian. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yuriipetrovich (talk • contribs) 02:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Reconsider, please
A request for article on Italian film Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Da grande (film) has been rejected for lack of references (IMDB is a trap for newbies, surely) but I've checked and added some other refs now. BTW the original author (not me!) has added a ref to New York Times, and complained to the reviewer. I have put a note on the reviewer's user page. How should we now proceed? Have read the Instructions but can't find anything on an appeals process. Page should clearly be accepted in my view. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The author can resubmit it (there should be instructions on the declined banner) or you could just accept it for them, no problem. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:43, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

FYI template:userspace draft
I went ahead and modified the Template:Userspace draft: Please post any wrong submitted templates, moves or edits by Petan-Bot. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:58, 7 October 2011 (UTC) Oh I forgot: WP:SYMUD was also changes by me after discussion at WP:VPM and thus we are getting right now many submissions. @Earwig: can Earwigbot create a page with statistics? I love stats ^^ <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 11:02, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I removed the "move button/link" for autoconfirmed user
 * I added a new link for the user, adding the AFC submission template
 * Petan-Bot was modified to move submissions to the top


 * And if you check now the 30-days graph of the NPP team, then you will see the backlog is shrinking... graph here. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:00, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Should Petan-bot move rejected submissions to AFC space
I don't think the bot should continue to move already rejected submissions from userspace to AFC space. If a rejection has already been made, there is no benefit to having the article relocated, as the primary point of relocation is to facilitate reviewing. For unconstructive submissions, such as jokes or really obvious WP:NOT material, having them moved with a redirect strikes me as a negative, as it increases the presence of material we don't want on Wikipedia, and could appear to the submitter as a confusing behavior. I raised this on the bot op's talk page, and was suggested to discuss it here instead. Monty <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  15:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I would agree that there seems to be little point in moving these submissions. Actually I don't know why we move submissions at all - why can't they stay in userspace and they can be reviewed there? It doesn't really make it any easier if they are in "afc" space. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * For those using the AFC Helper tool, it only works in AFC space. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  22:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Martin: it is easier for cleanup and clearing the cats if they should get deleted in some time. (we started to delete and merge some pages). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 08:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Removing the userspace draft option from the article wizard

 * Retrieved from archive. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk)

I have been working at both Articles for Creation and Requested Moves and have noticed that many new users are confused by the userspace draft option. They create a userspace draft and are then unsure on how to move it to mainspace. They either find requested moves, where if there is problems, the draft is picked apart and the move is declined leaving the new editor with no idea on what to do. Or, they use Template:Helpme or the IRC help channel, in which case they are prompted to add Template:AFC submission/submit and article is moved to AfC and reviewed like a normal submission. There are also a some drafts where the draft creator discovers how to move the submission to mainspace. Overall, this process is very confusing to new editors.

I would like to propose that the userspace draft option be removed from Article wizard/Ready for submission and replaced with an option to create a draft in Articles for Creation. So that we can keep track of these drafts, I would like to propose we repurpose the hold parameter. These drafts would not be located in Category:Pending AfC submissions, instead they would be located in another category, Category:Draft AfC submissions (working title). This would allow new users to work on drafts over time. When the draft writer is satisfied with their work, they would be advised (through a hidden comment or a link in the template to a image explaining how) to remove the H from the template, submitting it for review. (therefore removing the draft from Category:Draft AfC submissions and adding it to Category:Pending AfC submissions to be reviewed normally.) In the event that no work is done on a draft in two weeks, it will be declined. This method would make it easier for new users to create a draft and get feedback. They would not have to search though Wikipedia to find out how to move their draft, and would not have to deal with the Requested moves process or search for a way to submit the article to AfC. In any case we still have to review the moved user space drafts, as they are tagged with a review template, which often confuses new users as to why their articles do not get reviewed after several months. I believe that this proposal will make the process easier for new users. Thoughts? Alpha Quadrant   talk    20:56, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think there is some value in giving the option of the userspace draft, but perhaps the instructions need to be improved. On the other hand, the advantage of your method is that non-registered users can also create a draft not just those with an account. And it is true that the current setup is causing confusion. In any case I think this suggestion needs advertising a bit, perhaps at WT:WIZ and Help talk:Userspace draft. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Another idea would be to create two headers, and divide Article wizard/Ready for submission with level three headers with two sections, the first being "For new users" and the second header reading "For experienced users". The "For new users" section would contain the normal AfC option and the AfC draft option. While the "For experienced users" section would contain the userspace draft and live article options. This would then still allow users to use the userspace draft option. Also, thanks for the suggestion, I will link this section from other areas. Alpha Quadrant    talk    22:41, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I like this idea. RD232 recently mentioned that pages moved from userspace do not show up at special:NewPages, so if the user succeeds in moving the page himself it receives absolutely no review. Encouraging draft creation at AFC will help us keep track of those articles. Deleting the drafts is not a good idea, we don't normally delete declined AFC pages either. Instead we could just mark them inactive if not edited for a month. Yoenit (talk) 07:04, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, but we'd have to keep it separate; I doubt many experienced editors would want to go through AFC, even accidentally. Would it be possible for the wizard to automatically differentiate between new users (maybe under 500 edits) and experienced ones (more than that). Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:40, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Why would experienced users go through the wizard at all? Yoenit (talk) 14:49, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't know the numbers; it's theoretically possible, although I've never used it myself. Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:14, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Doesn't the AW add a notice to the top of the page? Add a short instruction there on moving to article space. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:26, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * While a good idea, that does not help non-autoconfirmed users. Yoenit (talk) 15:03, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * To the best of my knowledge, most users of the article wizard are IP editors and new non-autoconfirmed users. Most new users take a week or two writing their articles when they make a draft. If the note only appeared for autoconfirmed users, then they would never see the notice. Also, like Yoenit said, article drafts do not show up in the patrol log, even if moved to mainspace. An article would remain unreviewed if the editor removed Template:New unreviewed article. Alpha Quadrant    talk    15:21, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't really like the userspace draft idea for new users, because it decentralizes things and often they think their draft is a "live" article, but I think it is useful for one reason: they get plenty of time to work on it. Currently, there is no way to tell if an AfC submission is being worked on still, if the author has submitted it for review and think they are "done". It's not easy to write an article in one go. I support implementing a new system to deprecate the userspace draft suggestion for new users, designed similar to the way Wikinews works: We could also have a set time to delete old "developing" articles which have been abandoned, or just archive them away like we do with every other failed submission. On Wikinews, I think this sort of system has worked fairly well. And I think this is quite similar to what Alpha Quadrant originally proposed above. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  18:46, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Page created with all the current pre-load stuff (ref section, hidden comment instructions, etc.). Instead of a "pending review" template at the top, the tag should say something like "under development". It will be sorted into a new category of developing submissions.
 * 2) Once the author has finished writing the article—whether after a few hours, a day, a week, etc., they change the template into a "pending review" one, so we know they want a review and think they are done. This also lets us give more accurate comments.
 * 3) To make it more newbie friendly, we could write some javascript to create a link or button on the template itself for users to click, which will automagically change the template into a "pending review" mode from either "developing" or "declined". This would be more user-friendly than having to change a parameter or add the  stuff again.


 * Though some submitters may not want to spend time writing a draft, and may just want to submit a submission in one try. Which brings up a question, if a draft is submitted and has issues, should we decline it, or should we leave comments and remove the review request? (by adding the H parameter) If we do decide to leave comments on drafts, and again mark them as a draft, we will need some way to distinguish them from single submissions. We could probably add a |draft = yes parameter to Template:AFC submission/pending. Alpha Quadrant    talk    19:31, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm, we could have an option in the wizard, like "I am ready to submit this for review" versus "I want to save this as a public draft and submit it for review later". Also, if a draft is submitted (I assume you mean requesting review, when it's clearly still a draft), then I'd leave comments and move it back to draft status—no point in saying "declined" if it's obviously not finished. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  20:46, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There have been no further comments on this in the past three days. Should I open a request for comment? Alpha Quadrant    talk    23:42, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I quite like Fetchcomm's ideas above, as it emphasises that there is no rush to complete the article. We do not want new users to submit their articles until they are ready, and it is quite unreasonable to expect them to make them suitable for article space in their first edit! Could we not adopt this approach to all submissions, rather than giving another option (which might cause more confusion). The article wizard could add a banner to the top which explains that the article is in draft form, and add it to a new category for drafts. It would also contain instructions on how to submit their article for review. I could help with some of the technicalities of this if needed. (The javascript idea is also nice, but I couldn't help with that.) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I like the idea to improve the actual system. I saw a big problem (also described a bit in the next section) in moving user space drafts directly or placing only the afc code on it, while not being in the "afc-space". <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 11:22, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I notice that the article wizard was recently updated, removing the userspace draft option, and citing this discussion as consensus. I'm not sure if this was the conclusion of this thread? I thought we were bouncing ideas and did not know there was a concrete proposal. Perhaps we could look at this a little more? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see a huge problem. I mean, there's little difference in where the drafts are, and it's easier to have them in a central place rather than scattered across the wiki. Anyone who wants to make a userspace draft still can, of course. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:22, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah. I would like to see that the direct possibility to create pages get also removed there since I doubt that there are any real "submissions" don't get deleted or have major problems. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 09:09, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

AfC bot discussion
I started a discussion a few weeks ago on this page about a bot task which would decline AfC submissions which satisfy one of the quick-fail criteria. The discussion ended up being more about how the bot should run and what it should or shouldn't do, rather than coming to a consensus on whether or not it should run at all. Long story short, the bot went through a trial at WP:BRFA but was denied due to unclear consensus. The aim of this discussion is to discover whether or not there is consensus for this task. The details of the task have changed a bit since first conceived, so I'll describe them here again:

The bot will check new AfC submissions for the following conditions: If it finds a submission that is blank or unreferenced, it will immediately leave a warning on the author's talk page. The current warnings can be viewed at Template:Afc warning/testcases. Once the article is 1 hour old, the bot will check if any edits have been made to it since the warning was given. If no edits have been made, it will decline the article and post the normal message on the author's talk page.
 * Check if the submission is completely blank (except for the AfC submission template, and any other default text inserted by the Article Wizard).
 * Check if the submission is completely unreferenced. Unreferenced is defined as:
 * No tags in the article
 * No Cite templates in the article
 * No external links anywhere in the article
 * No text in the ==References== section (apart from the default text inserted by the Article Wizard).
 * Submission is not a redirect, or even includes the word "redirect" anywhere in the text
 * Submission is not a disambiguation page, or even includes the word "disambig" anywhere in the text
 * Check if the submission might be an attack page. The bot does this by looking for a long list of bad words.  If it finds a bad word, it will ignore the page and allow a human reviewer to deal with it.

Also of note is that User talk:Snotbot redirects to my own talk page, User talk:Snottywong, and I will personally field any questions or comments from users seeking more information about a declined article.

The goal is that the bot would take care of the most uncontroversial inappropriate submissions, and leave submissions that might actually have a chance for the human reviewers to review in their limited time. Like I mentioned above, the bot is already coded and went through a trial at BRFA. You can see the edits it made in its trial here:
 * Warnings given to users
 * Declined submissions
 * Declined submission notifications

Please indicate below whether your Support or Oppose this task, so that we may determine what the consensus is. Thanks for your time. <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> gossip 17:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose AfC is a primary contact point between new, inexperienced users and Wikipedia as a whole. To have a bot, let alone one called Snotbot, come into the mix is not a good idea. Sorry, but you've addressed one concern from the BRFA page, but not the other, bigger concern of the need for AfC to have a human touch.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  17:10, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Weak support. I think the current bot's behavior of a warning before a fail is more than human HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support I see where Sven is coming from, but the proposed conditions are sufficiently well defined and uncontroversial that I don't think it will come across as bitey, or any different from a human reviewer really. Now, given that these type of submissions can be reviewed and declined in a few seconds I'm not sure how much it will help with the backlog either, but it's worth a try. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 18:26, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support and move the task to the new AFC - bot Petan created. The attacking pages can be additional placed in a special category for easier noticing/finding for doing it high priority to clear or CSD' the 'drafts'. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:52, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I oppose this bot largely for the reasons stated by User:The Earwig in the original discussion. There are too many possibilities to WP:BITE newcomers here. You didn't get consensus then, so I'm not sure why you proceeded with this BRFA? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:06, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Souring declines and Conditionally Support Blank declines I do not think it is a good idea having a bot declining submissions. It is one thing to have it warn users that their submission has issues (i.e. ChzzBot IV). However, it is a completely different thing to have a bot actually decline submissions. I have seen submissions where submitters have placed book sources without the tags in the middle of the article. Some submitters rename or remove the "References" section to "footnotes", "sources", bibliography, etc. There is a large number of things that could be missed by a bot, that a human editor would see. I am open to auto-declining blank submissions, as long as there aren't multiple edits to the page, and the submission has been live for at least an hour. I have often seen submitters create a blank submission, and add content shortly thereafter. Immediate declining by a bot would be rather bitey. Also, if it is possible to get a bot back up that can flag potential copyright violations, that would be extremely helpful. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  22:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose. Even with human touch, when there's a back log, mistakes are rather common. Rejecting articles for lacking footnotes is not acceptable. I can give you examples why, but you can probably figure them out from my recent edit history. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 09:48, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Having a robot decline articles is extremely impersonal and an immediate put-off. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  00:02, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Where is the differences to "more or less" automated declines with tools? (especially to blank submissions) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:05, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the scripts and stuff? Because a human can leave comments specific to each article, a human can add refs themselves, and a human can IAR. If someone submits an article about a high school or village or something else inherently notable but without sources, I'm going to add them myself in five minutes and accept the article. Instead of making the nom jump through hoops or possibly drive them away from WP. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  00:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose per WP:BITE - the whole point in AFC is, to give help, instead of template-warning-crap. Just consider If it finds a submission that is blank or unreferenced, it will immediately leave a warning... no, no, no. What if they edit it half an hour, or half a day later?  They quite often do.  And I know very well, from recently working on, that it's complicated and difficult to get these 'automated' things *right* in reviewing new articles. Sorry, I hate the idea.  Chzz  ►  13:30, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

If the British had twice the number of troops and supplies, why were they unable to defeat the Patriots quickly?
Please help! Need answer to this by Friday! If you can find the answer to this I will be very happy Thanks!

--99.176.7.33 (talk) 00:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have replied at your talk page. Huon (talk) 01:41, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Submission header broken?
It seems when I click on the project header for "Submissions" it doesn't direct to the normal article list, instead it goes to a page with the link WikiProject Articles for creation/tabs (which is the page for the header). All the other headers seems to work as per normal. As far as I'm aware it's been like this for a couple of hours now, although I'm not sure the cause. Is this happening to anyone else? France 3470  ( talk ) 01:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Works for me, and apparently no relevant page has been edited for the past few days. Huon (talk) 01:27, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Just tried it again and it seems to work. (hurrah!) Not sure why it wasn't before. Thanks. France 3470   ( talk ) 01:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, the submissions page is again no longer displaying. I will note that WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions is currently in Category:Pages with too many expensive parser function calls. Due to the increase in submissions, the page may not be able to render all the submissions on the page. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  17:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Happed to me a few minutes ago. Not fix right know... But might because of the big backlog! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 22:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Not sure how to proceed with article added as a section
I've taken material from Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Nitrate Poisoning and added it as a section in nitrate (which already had a section on toxicity which could be expanded) rather than create a new article (the proposed name has bad capitalization anyway). How should I close this out? Mangoe (talk) 21:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The only thing you can do is decline it and state that in the reason. Do it manually though, and rather than putting the decline template on the submitter's talk page explain that you've added it to Nitrate. In future though I would recommend declining the AfC with a "mergeto" message encouraging the user to add the material themselves. The way you've done it breaks the contribution history and technically violates WP:CWW. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 21:08, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I am going to create the redirect at Nitrate poisoning, so I could create the article, move it to fix the caps, and then show the merge that way. Mangoe (talk) 21:26, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That would work. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 22:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks; I hope everything is sorted out correctly now. Mangoe (talk) 22:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikiprojects
The St Lawrence for Pegwell Bay railway station article has been created via AfC and some input from WP:UKT members. It may prove beneficial to inform wikiprojects of potential articles that have been suggested via AfC. Interested member may have sources that are not available to those writing the article at AfC. More sources = better demonstration of notability = better articles. Mjroots (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
 * This is just me thinking spur of the moment, but is there a way we could segregate AfC submissions into topics? For example, for someone wanting to create an article on a military topic, we could have AfC/Military articles, for an actress or TV show we could have AfC/Entertainment, for a place AfC/Geography, for athletes AfC/Sports, and so on.  Just getting a few of the big topics split out will help ameliorate some of the overwhelmed feeling a dramatic uptick at AfC could bring along. I'm sure the larger WikiProjects, e.g. MILHIST, would be on board for that. The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 20:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)


 * A better idea would be to have an additional checkbox in the JS helper to inform WikiProjects automatically about new articles. Maybe I get around this in a few weeks (I'm on a vacation now). Regards, <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 21:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Informed how, though? Personally I try to make a habit of putting WikiProject templates on the talk pages of the articles I create, is that enough? Leaving messages on WikiProject talk pages could get a little spammy for some of the larger projects. And articles created through AfC already show up on AlexNewArtBot/TedderBot subscriptions like any other - actually they don't; perhaps that could be rectified somehow? joe&bull;roet&bull;c 21:56, 27 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The station article was created at a talk page, which meant that there was nowhere to discuss the article whilst it was being created. Obviously if an article is going to pass muster, there is no real need to get WPs involved. I was thinking more of those cases where an article has an obviously notable topic, but needs better references, a good copy edit or there is some other problem which should be easily overcome before the article can go live. Mjroots (talk) 17:20, 28 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The vast majority of submissions are at Wikipedia talk:, because IPs can't create pages in the main project namespace. Usually if there's discussion it's done above the submission with Afc comment templates. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 18:30, 28 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand that IPs can't create pages in mainspace. So, why not move the pages created by IPs from talk to mainspace, then turn the redirect into a proper talk page. Mjroots (talk) 05:27, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * This is possible - there is even a link on the submission banner ("move to project") which can help you to do this. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:37, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Per request of User:Okeyes (WMF) I posted some improvements ideas (including the wikiproject informing) at User:Okeyes (WMF)/AFC. Feel free to post your ideas there, too. (especially the ideas where we need help of devs/WMF/etc.) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:53, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Article creation workflow
Since this is likely to be of great interest to contributors on Wikipedia, I just wanted to make sure you were aware that explorations of an "Article creation workflow" intended to help guide newcomers into more easily crafting articles that meet policies are ongoing at mw:Article creation workflow. This is an ideal time to help guide thinking there (feedback solicited at talk page), if you have input. :) Given that you guys have a lot of direct interaction with new contributors working on articles, it seems like you might particularly have something to offer there. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Make user talk notification script preload the article name
Can someone figure out how to do that? It would be a major improvement vs. having to copy and paste it every time, which frankly I can't be bothered with. Usually people don't submit more than one article, so they probably can still find it even if you don't tell them, but that's not a guarantee. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 14:13, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you are talking about, but there are two AFC-helper scripts. One (in my eyes the better one) is at User talk:Timotheus Canens/afchelper4.js, which is adding a new tab similar like twinkle. It does all the stuff, also reviewing (and thus creating) redirects and cats at WP:AFC/R... <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 14:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about the bog standard link "inform author" that doesn't require any extra JavaScript. I tried the TC script, but it does nothing for me. If it didn't take a geek genius to handle this minutiae, you might get more reviewers. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 08:22, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but the helper script of TC is notifying the user with the correct link to the declined/accepted article. Maybe you don't know, but Earwig also improved another script at User:The_Earwig/afc-helper.js. Maybe this one is serving your needs more. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 11:06, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I find it completely impossible to review submissions with any sort of efficiency without one of the JS helper scripts. They're easy to install, have very little overhead, and I don't see how it's possible to offer the same functionality through templates alone, so I'm not really sure what you have against them. We might would get more reviewers if the scripts were better publicised, which has been remarked upon before. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 20:48, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and filled a bug report for achieving that without any JS. Sadly that there is no function to overgive a parameter (I was advised by some devs in IRC to do that) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:51, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The JS stuff doesn't work for me, as in does not even show its button/tabs, despite the fact that I've added it to my monobook.js a while back, and restarted Firefox 7 a few times, cleared the cache, etc., still does nothing. Twinkle works for me, so I assume it's not a global JS issue in my browser. Uʔ (talk) 07:27, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As for "completely impossible to review submissions with any sort of efficiency without one of the JS helper scripts"; not in my experience—only the user notifications are rather uninformative or too laborious without. Uʔ (talk) 07:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry for asking, I had a similar case last week, are you (still) using monobook? <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I suppose not, I'm using whatever is default, which seems to be the "vector" skin, so I suppose I should try "vector.js". After some digging in the documentation, it looks like MW 1.7 has a new option for "common.js", but Wikipedia doesn't seem to be running that version. Uʔ (talk) 19:27, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Vector.js worked; thanks for the guidance. Uʔ (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Propose merge of Wikipedia talk:Article wizard and this page
I propose that both talkpages should be merged and thus Wikipedia talk:Article wizard should be redirected to this. Both pages are handling the same content and mostly the same user are active since 2009 (as Martin (MSGJ) posted in section Wikipedia talk:Article wizard). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 01:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * They're not the same, though. This is a WikiProject of users who help with reviewing, and the wizard is for submitting. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  01:16, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, they are really not the same, but as the head-box of the talkpage correctly states: "To help centralise discussions and keep related topics together, all wizard talk pages redirect here." and since this is the project, it would be wise if that page also would get redirected to this place. Both talkpages don't have that much traffic so merging them wouldn't harm the situation. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 11:03, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That doesn't make sense to me. We're not going to redirect Portal talk:United States to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States, because although the latter supports the former, they are two different things that have different purposes. The wizard's talk page exists for discussion regarding the wizard itself. This talk page is for general discussion among the project's participants. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  14:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Note that someone has managed to leave feedback at the foot of the redirect page. Where is the "Leave feedback" link for the Article Wizard? I've had a quick look but cannot see it; it might need fixing. FWIW I don't see why these feedback pages should be merged. There are plenty of other feedback pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Why was my article treated like that of a newcomer?
I may be in the wrong place, but several weeks ago I created an article in userspace because I didn't feel I had enough sources or enough information to guarantee the article wouldn't be threatened with deletion. Once I felt comfortable, I moved it, and the article was moved. I did the same thing last week, but the article wasn't moved to the right place. I'm not really sure where it went as there were directions for what to do next, and a strong recommendation that I move the article to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mr. Joe White Avenue. Not knowing what else to do, I did that. User:Chzz recognized I was an established editor and moved the article to the proper place. I haven't received a response from this person on why this was necessary, but it doesn't matter because he/she is not the expert on what happened in the first place.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I completely understand, but it was submitted to AfC (and therefore it was suggested by the template that you move it to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mr. Joe White Avenue) because you placed the AFC submission template on it. After that, as far as I can tell, Chzz reviewed and accepted it like any other submission, it didn't "bypass" the AfC process because you are an established user. I'm assuming all this happened because you were following the instructions from the Article wizard. AfC and the article wizard are designed for new users though, specifically unregistered ones, so just moving it straight to article space in future would avoid adding to our backlog. You'll still get the same amount of peer review through new page patrol (which has a lot more volunteers). joe&bull;roet&bull;c 20:37, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Or you hit the submit button in the userspace draft template (which we changed in the first days of October). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

The above looks correct to me.


 * On 21st, when it was in userspace (User:Vchimpanzee/Mr. Joe White Avenue), Vchimpanzee added the template to request a review
 * Because it was in userspace, the template would have displayed an informational message, saying Warning: this page should probably be located at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/AFC submission. Note this appears to be the reason for the confusion here; but, if the AFC template is used to 'submit' an article for review, and the article isn't in "Wikipedia Talk:Articles for creation/Articlename", it is designed to advise that it should probably be moved.
 * Vchimpanzee moved it there
 * Next day, I saw it, checked it, and decided I could 'accept' it - hence, moved it to a live article

It had nothing to do with your being an established editor, Vchimpanzee - any editor is quite free to use the AFC process (for example, if they have a COI concern) - and their submission should (hopefully) be evaluated in the same way as any other. I even declined one from Jimbo, once (here) :-)

I hope that helps explain.  Chzz  ► 01:36, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I had the same problem/mistake with Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/John A. Rizzo 1. Can I move it to article space now? 2. How do I do that? 3. How do I avoid this in the future? Mnnlaxer (talk) 03:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Got it approved. I'll know better next time. Mnnlaxer (talk) 04:46, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. When I didn't get a response here I asked the question here too. They were very helpful. Thanks everyone.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:58, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Pages where template include size is exceeded
A lot of the WikiPoject tabs are now giving that error and not displaying their contents except as a link. See WP:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions for example. Uʔ (talk) 19:02, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Mellanox technologies
Looks like I'm a day late to the party, but I believe I can write a decent article about Mellanox Technologies (which was deleted just the other day), using sources such as http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HOTI.2007.16, http://www.springerlink.com/content/f4402734x8p60772/ or http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.85.9076&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Would you mind if I recreate the article ,and possibly provide me with the latest content that was deleted so I don't have to start everything from scratch? Jeff Song (talk) 23:53, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I have had a look at those sources, and I don't think they allow to write a meaningful article on the company or establish notability; while they are performance tests on specific pieces of Mellanox equipment, they don't seem to contain any significant coverage of the company itself.
 * Providing you with the latest content would require an admin anyway; my advice would have been to contact the deleting admin Causa sui, but I noticed he sent you here... Huon (talk) 00:20, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't you think those sources establish that the company's products, at a minimum are notable? For the company itself, I was thinking of using things like http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/24/juniper_looking_for_acquisitions/ (6 paragraphs discussing Mellanox, its 'dominant presence in Ethernet and InfiniBand host bus adapters,' and why its products would be interesting for Juniper) or this one - http://10-gigabit-ethernet.tmcnet.com/topics/10-gigabit-ethernet/articles/226214-the-road-with-mellanox-technologies.htm - in depth coverage of a new product by the company, or this one, covering its acquisition of Voltaire, and Oracel's investment in Mellanox http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4211079/Mellanox-buys-Voltaire. Jeff Song (talk) 17:29, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and created a draft of an article, located here: User:Jeff Song/Mellanox. I believe the sources provided (Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Globes, EETimes) establish notability well enough - happy to hear thoughts. Jeff Song (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Yin Mei Dance
Another AfC reviewer and I both rejected Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Yin Mei Dance last week - I liked it and gave it an encouraging message, but have had no response. Since I felt the article was very worthy I tidied it up and added quotations and citations. I think it could now go into mainspace but as I'm now an involved party, not sure how to proceed. Resubmit? Accept and put a comment on talk page? Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:05, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I've reviewed the article and it seems to me that it would be better promoted as a biographic article on Yin Mei herself; other than that the notability issues seem to be resolved. If you want to touch it up that way and drop me a line, I can give it another look. Mangoe (talk) 12:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think there is anything wrong with approving an article after working on it. The review process is primarily to stop submissions that are likely to be deleted before they make it to Article space, afaik there is no rule that reviewers be uninvolved. Though there is also nothing wrong with asking for another set of eyes before approving. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  00:51, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Reviewers should be involved. We're not robots here to stamp or reject an article, we're here to collaborate and help improve content. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  04:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Expanded review directions
After seeing several problems recently, I've boldly expanded the directions for reviewers here. These errors are largely the community's fault, not the individual's, because the source of the problem is our failure to provide adequate direction. When we don't provide adequate direction, then processes like AFC become a sort of oral tradition, with all the problems that entails: I once saw someone say that WP:PARENthetical citations aren't permitted, and I didn't see him get in trouble for saying it, so he must have been right, and now I'll pass along that falsehood in perfectly good faith.

My goal in selecting examples was to focus on major errors (thinking that ref tags are absolutely required by policy) and on irrelevancies (easily solved formatting issues, like insufficient wikilinks). I'm sure there are several other common errors, so if someone else wants to expand the list, please feel free. I'd kind of prefer that the list didn't reach WP:TLDR lengths, though, because reviewers' time is better spent dealing with articles than slogging through documentation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Is there any reason why these directions are under the "draft submission" section? While the whole draft submission thing is extremely confusing to me and I still have no idea why that change was made, I think these directions apply to declining any submission, whether it started out as a userspace draft or not.  Should probably move it out of the draft submission section.  Otherwise, good job.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> gab 18:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That was the only section that seemed to actually talk about declining submissions as a whole thing, rather than isolated reasons for declining (Quick-fail, Suitability, and Notability). Perhaps, though, it would be better to create a separate section, ===Invalid reasons for declining===, to follow the ===Notability=== section.  I'll try that, and you can let me know if you think that's worse.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * @Snottywong the pending drafts were created as an alternative to "phrasing out" the userspacedraft. At least that option was now successfully removed from the Wizard, but we did want to have an alternative for more experienced users, so that we got now 4 different systems: the classic submissions --> the pending drafts --> the userspacedrafts and the directly created articles (mostly users using the latter systems after gaining more experience).
 * @WhatamIdoing good job. Yeah I think that we have many under construction bays in the whole Wikipedia related to any guides... <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 16:13, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If someone clearly has no idea what policy actually says, and is claiming that something is not allowed when it's really OK, they need to be asked to stop reviewing articles, immediately. AfC is often the first contact someone has with Wikipedia. We cannot let unclueful people scare them away with imaginary requirements. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  04:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

afchelper4: Can it work with anything in the pending category?
I notice that the list of categories is part of the config set of a page. If that's the case, is it possible to add the review link to the topbar when pages are in that category but not in the usual place? Sceptre (talk) 20:37, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure if that's a good idea. If the article is not in the right place, then either it should be moved to the right place, or the Afc submission should be removed from it.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> express 20:48, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I see nothing wrong with reviewing submissions outside of AfC space, but I think it would hard to get AFC Helper to detect pages outside the space. So we must either review manually, or just use the move to AfC space button in the template. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  00:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * We have to devide this discussion into two cases:
 * The submission-templates in mainspace which were wrongly moved/placed or are accepted a few moments ago. In both cases the template should get removed and/or the page moved back/tagged/speedied/whatever.
 * The second case is more obvious: a user is requesting a review (mostly by hitting the button/link on the userspacedraft-template) and our bot (User:ArticlesForCreationBot, formerly User:Petan-Bot) will move the pages automatically, removing the userspacedraft template and leaves a note on the user's talkpage.
 * In the latter case, the bot might be slow in some cases and you have either to wait only, or move it by hand by hitting the button in the submission template. The bad side effect by moving it by hand is, that the user isn't informed automatically.
 * Oh and Monty: as already told you in IRC a few min ago: changing the AFC helper tool is not that hard. We could tweak the helper by two ways:
 * only that the reviewing options are available (changing only one line) or
 * that the page gets (by hitting a button) moved and the user again informed (would be a few more lines to develop)
 * I'm not really sure after a chat discussion, if we need that change on the JS tool. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 15:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Afc bot
Hi, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Petrb#AfC_bot Someone recently complained about the task, so I would like you to discuss it and tell me if you want to disable bot, or leave it running Petrb (talk) 20:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

User:ChzzBot IV/AFC unreferenced -- doing weird things with disambiguation pages
User:ChzzBot IV is adding a references needed suggestion to disambiguation page submissions. As disambiguation pages do not have references (WP:DAB) this should not be happening. It is suggesting that people who submit disambiguation pages do something that is not supposed to be placed on disambiguation pages. 65.94.77.11 (talk) 04:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes; apologies again, the bot has been stopped until I fix it; please see here.  Chzz  ► 17:26, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's been fixed; I've improved the bot, so it does its best to avoid dabs, redirects, templates, and various other stuff. I'll continuously tweak it, checking as many as I can.  Chzz  ► 11:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

ArticlesForCreationBot
There is currently a discussion at Bots/Requests for approval/ArticlesForCreationBot about having the bot remove duplicate pending templates, non-pending draft templates, and/or old irrelevant decline templates from submissions pending review. Alpha_Quadrant   (talk)  16:27, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * And now it was approved. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 13:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Ganked
Can you guys create Ganked a page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 19:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Requests go here, this page is for discussing internal project stuff. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 20:33, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, User:Chzz and I saw your request at Article_wizard/Userfeedback and Chzz left a comment on your old IP talkpage: here. Can you specify about what do you want to have an article about? <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 13:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

New and improved Template:AFC statistics
So I've deployed the new version of the statistics page for anyone that uses it (and hoping some people will start!), which has been in development, completely from scratch, for a few weeks now. I'm glad to finally push it to the live page so I can kill the old version with fire. This one is many magnitudes more efficient and should be a lot more reliable, but is likely to be bug-ridden in these early stages, so let me know if anything strange happens. The "submissions page" at WP:AFC/S still doesn't work, but this is because of the sheer number of submissions currently (looking at 356 pending subs at time of writing) and it should be fine if we ever succeed in clearing most of the backlog.

As before, it updates every hour (on the hour this time), and recently accepted/declined submissions are kept around for 36 hours before being removed from the table. I realize the "recently accepted" chart is empty for now; I'll get that working soon, but the rest of it Everything seems to be working as intended.

And its code is here if anyone is interested. Best, &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  23:11, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * As you noted, the Submissions page at WP:AFC/S is broken. The template enclosing the submissions page can't transclude this statistics page. I have moved the closing braces for this template to close before the statistics page is transcluded, but that should be considered a temporary fix.


 * Also, the statistics page isn't updating properly. For example, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Enomatic is missing, and that was submitted several hours ago. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:42, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks like the submission was lacking a template at the time, causing it to not be in Category:Pending AfC submissions and thus not be tracked – or am I missing something? &mdash;  The Earwig   (talk)  04:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Templates and newbies
Sue Gardner mentioned in her presentation a couple of days ago how new-editor retention rates have dropped to unprecedented levels, and she cited the proliferation of talk page templates as one major factor. I accidentally came across a new article the other day that was created by a newbie who doesn't appear to have stuck around. I'm really sorry Wikipedia missed a chance to acquire a valuable contributor. The article was Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Nikky_Finney, and the newbie who created it was User_talk:Forward100. The article clearly lacked citations (although quite a lot of it was verifiable via the external links given). On the other hand, this was a person who can clearly write well, and all the info s/he put in checks out (I am currently going through the article sourcing it). It's a lot harder to teach someone to write well than it is to teach them referencing. If you look at her talk page, all the contributor got was a bot message and a template. There was no personal contact. Her draft was turned down (I am not quite sure how it actually ended up in mainspace), and the template used to communicate the result of the review looks pretty forbidding:


 * Colour : #ffcdd5

The colour and logo of that template send the message "You've failed", "You weren't good enough". There is no thank you. That's a pity in this case, because this article was really valuable -- not wikified, not referenced the way we do it, but a good-faith effort, solid in content, well written, and about a notable person (Finney just won a National Book Award) in a field where our coverage has big, big gaps. That user hasn't been back to Wikipedia since then. I think we need to try harder to reach out to newbies who clearly have potential, and think about how we can teach them what they have to learn about Wikipedia without discouraging them, or making them feel we don't want them. Having a look at the design of that template might be a first step.

Now I acknowledge that I don't know how AfC works, how many editors there are here and how many new articles you have to deal with, but I still wanted to mention it in light of Sue's comments recently. Thoughts? Cheers, -- J N  466  02:39, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If I think the article can be brought into line, usually I try to tack on an encouraging note to the template. Mangoe (talk) 03:51, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There are a small number of editors who deal with the hundreds of articles which come through here. We're usually swamped; I opt for reviewing a smaller number and welcoming or fixing issues myself, but if everyone did so we'd be even more backlogged than we are already. It's a difficult balance, and I suspect one that can only be fixed by more hands on deck-- just the same way new page patrol would benefit from it. The way I see it, at least these things don't just vanish like deleted articles do, or sit abandoned with a refimprove and questionable content in mainspace. But I'd encourage all reviewers- please go back and twinklewelcome each user you leave a template for. It's at least that much more encouraging, if not personalized. <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫ 04:10, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * (e/c, tl;dr) Not sure what you mean by "that user hasn't been back to Wikipedia since then". The user submitted their article for creation on 10 October, 2011 and wasn't reviewed until 21 October; but the user had also dumped the article in the mainspace on 11 October, which was de facto accepted (patrolled) and worked on by several editors since then (including you). The user's last edit was on 19 October, 8 days after her article was first dumped and started in the mainspace, clearly xe would have known by 21 October that the article wasn't rejected. The AFC version of it would have been declined anyway as a duplicate of an article already in the mainspace.


 * In defence of Alpha_Quadrant, there is currently a massive backlog at CAT:AFC and reviewers might have less patience then usual. Yes, the individual is notable, even interesting. No, the article wasn't ready for primetime. Too bad the editor didn't stick around. Now let's pretend the article was not dumped in the mainspace on 11 October; and instead waited at AFC (as one of its two versions did). Woops, it's turned down. A sensible person would read the notice, right? Where you see a negative red background and mean, mean words, I see the following :
 * A clear, and valid, reason why the article is not ready to be published, with links to guidelines and help pages.
 * A suggestion to address the issue and re-submit.
 * A link to the reviewer's user page, from which one who is observant can reach the talk page.
 * If editors cannot read basic messages and follow a basic process, and just decide to leave because they feel rejected, is it truly our fault, the template's fault, Alpha_Quadrant's fault? Could it be that they are not interested in building an encyclopedia, or are outright overwhelmed by the jungle that serves as help pages and bureaucratic process here? Because that's the real problem. A never-ending flow of policies, guidelines, essays, help pages, processes, for everything, everywhere, duplicated, overlapping, etc. You have to be willing to learn when you come here, and walking away at the sight of a decline template suggests one is not willing to.


 * Want to keep more new editors, perhaps those who have left or avoided the 'pedia precisely because of the initial shock of "my article was deleted" and the steep learning curve that follows? Then the process has to change from the ground up, and we all know that won't happen. But then for all I care, the template can be made green-ish, with nice smiley faces and blinking stars. If that can save one contributor such as this one, perhaps it's actually the way to go... Or perhaps it's putting makeup on an open wound. There is such a staggering amount of crap that comes into AFC every day, from a COI-SPA dumping his PR piece, to a terrible English speaker writing about a non-notable Indian deities, to a single purpose account writing about the greatest MySpace band ever, to the activist telling the world about their great cause and wonderful foundation, etc. I would argue that we need messages that say NO more clearly for articles with no potential whatsoever, not messages that say "no, but maybe it will be approved if you improve it". The fact is that it most likely won't, and essentially we are misleading new editors into putting work on articles that would be deleted illico presto in the mainspace. But hey, sometimes editors will come forward, I've accepted several articles I previously declined after editors would come up on my talk page asking how they can improve it; others I would simply explain in more details why their work is not acceptable. Then there is the odd innocent casualty that for God-knows-what-reason walks away silently, like the case you just brought forward. I sympathize, I really do, and to be honest it's a pity that this one didn't stick around and persist. But is it really the template's fault?
 * Just my tl;dr two cents. Best regards, CharlieEchoTango (talk) 04:24, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * We're always severely backlogged, so AFC would be completely impractical without our templates and boilerplate text. I do seriously think changing the look of the template could help a little though: there's no reason why it has to be red and have a big red cross on it – universal symbols of rejection. We should just have a plain text message explaining that the article can't be accepted as it stands, why that is, and how it can be improved.
 * But at the end of the day I do agree that the problems with user retention start way, way back down the line from us. AFC gets the people who know literally nothing about Wikipedia yet still want to make an article. I don't think I've ever seen a submission from someone who had a decent edit history before they tried writing an article from scratch, because if they had they would probably create an account and bypass the project. We get a massively disproportionate amount of people who are simply not coming to Wikipedia in the right way and will never become useful contributors. The vast majority of submissions get declined for reasons that should have been caught by the questions in the article wizard: no references at all, blatantly not notable, etc. They're written by people who maybe didn't understand the English in the wizard, and therefore aren't going to make good contributors; or are pig-headed and think "their" article is the exception to our standards, and therefore aren't going to make good contributors; or have come here to write promotionally about one thing (especially companies) and don't care to invest time in learning our standards because they don't intend on returning, and therefore aren't going to make good contributors.
 * The unfortunate fact is that people like User:Forward100, people who would make good, long-term contributors to the project with a little help, people the process was designed for, are exceptionally rare around here. I would like to think that most of the time they are spotted and get a more helpful, personal touch than the rest – like User:Sonia I sometimes just pick through CAT:AFC to find these rather than tell the 1000th person that, no, their small consultancy firm is not notable, because helping create good articles is why I'm actually interested in this project. Inevitably a few get lost in the avalanche of crap, but what can we do about that? joe&bull;roet&bull;c 09:35, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * "We're always severely backlogged, so AFC would be completely impractical without our templates and boilerplate text." - That is not so correct. We were not that backlogged, hence we even cleared the backlogged in the summer before we made two radical changes to the userspace draft template and the Wizard. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 12:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The week we changed the wizard and transfered the submission that normally went through requested moves, we were able to keep the submission count well below thirty. On average, we received 45 submissions a day. One or two reviewers could handle it alone. Right now, we have about eight users that are fairly active in the process, and not all eight of us do reviews every day. Due to the wizard change, the userspace draft change, and the change to the user interface. (A link to AFC was added to the search results whenever there is a red link, and the user cannot create the article. i.e. IP editors/salted pages) We are now receiving about 180 submissions a day. We would all need to review at least 20 submissions in order to keep the process from becoming backlogged. If any particular reviewer doesn't make reviews for a while, we get backlogged. No one can, or even should, be expected to always be active here. The only way to solve this is to get a few more reviewers on board. If we had 4 - 10 more reviewers, the workload would be significantly decreased.


 * The problem with new editor retention is not Articles for Creation. This recent feedback comment highlights the real issue. From the users that come into IRC asking for help, many of them had the article they wrote speedy deleted. With a decline, you can still work on the draft and improve it. With a delete you need to track down the deleting admin, and ask them to userfy it. All declined submissions have a link to the Wikipedia IRC help channel. Often, submitters come to the channel and ask for help. With speedy delete, there is no way to ask for help. Most new users don't know that deleted articles can even be restored. Had WP:AACT gone through with the foundation, we would be receiving about 800 submissions a day. We would have also received most of the new page patrollers to assist in handling this.


 * I wouldn't say that it is rare for long term contributers to come out of AfC. I joined the project soon after creating an account, because I used the process often. I know of at least four users who are still editing long after their submissions were accepted. I also know of several editors that have been submitting articles to AfC for a long time. AfC is, by far, currenlt the best way to teach new users policy. It would be a mistake to let the project shut down or get backlogged beyond belief. Yes, we get a pile of bad submissions. According the data collected by The Earwig over the last two months, counting resubmits as new submissions, about 10% of the submissions that come through AfC are accepted. According to WP:AFC/S we have had 12041 new articles created and 31362 declined submissions. Over a quarter of the submissions that come through AfC are accepted. We get quite a bit of advertising articles, but I wouldn't say that the vast majority of the submissions that come through here are promotional junk. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  14:45, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Four? Out of how many hundreds you've reviewed? I'd call that rare. But I wasn't by any means suggesting AFC was a waste of time or should be shut down. Just that you have to appreciate where we fit amongst the newbie-facing projects before implying we're overly bitey (because I do think AFC is the least bitey of them, and that it's a shame WP:ACTRIAL was blocked). joe&bull;roet&bull;c 16:47, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Four that I have really taken notice, as they went ahead and helped out with the AfC process for a time after their submissions were accepted. I haven't really taken the time to see how many of the submitters are still around. It might be possible to run an automated check using AfC statistics. Also, perhaps we should look into checking with the WMF and see if they will support a trial if we get enough support. Running submissions through AfC has a lot of merit. We do a fairly good job helping new users write articles. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  17:04, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Getting back to the top - I agree the current pinky-red-box isn't a good colour. I've been fiddling around, trying others here. I'd support pretty much any change, and suggest someone gets BOLD.  Chzz  ► 12:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd go with #eee. It doesn't get more neutral than grey. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 12:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * After a bit of chat with somebody who apparently knows about "colour psychology" (!) and a few others, I've boldly changed it to #ffeeee, Which looks like this. . I did that, on the basis that we could talk about something this esoteric forever, or we could just get on with it; I'm pretty sure we all think the #ffcdd5 . WP:BRD.  Chzz  ► 12:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Steven and I were just talking about doing an AfC test as part of our template testing task force! How apropos :)

We made a draft space for coordinating ideas about template redesigns, and there are some AfC templates in there right now. Whether you're a member of our task force or not, anybody who's interested should definitely feel free to start tweaking with those templates. Once we have a few different variants, we can test them against the current versions and measure how good (or bad) they are at helping to retain new editors. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Merging
FYI, I boldly merged Article wizard/Userfeedback into WikiProject Articles for creation/feedback since both pages have the same purpose and I also started to create archives. Until last week I wasn't aware that there are two different pages for leaving us feedback (I was only aware of the first feedback page). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 21:10, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Moved discussion from a section above <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 16:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Note that someone has managed to leave feedback at the foot of the redirect page. Where is the "Leave feedback" link for the Article Wizard? I've had a quick look but cannot see it; it might need fixing. FWIW I don't see why these feedback pages should be merged. There are plenty of other feedback pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sry, I missed to change these 4 links in the Wizard. The problem is: I understand that we don't or shouldn't merge the WT:Wizard with this project talkpage, but the feedback pages are for the same purpose: Users who used/using the Wizard give us feedback and thus the reviewers should have watchlisted two feedback pages and most reviewers are unaware of these feedback pages (now: this feedback). As I wrote above: until last week I was only aware of one of the feedback page... <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 16:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Draft submissions (experimental)
Re. WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Reviewing_instructions

Can we drop that idea?

I don't see any benefit to it, and it's confusing. It's as easy as it can be for users to submit, especially from which has a button. And they don't need to move anything; a bot or the reviewer will move things as necessary.

So... does anyone object to doing away with "Draft submissions"?  Chzz  ► 13:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * To be precise: Chzz want that we remove the pending draft/userspacedraft option totally of the Wizard and thus the Wizard would only include
 * create a draft which is immediately up for a review
 * create a 'live' article which is immediately 'live'
 * Before we remove that option, I would first propose that we remove the third option - or at least hide this for users who aren't autoconfirmed. (similar to the old move-link in the template ) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 16:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Not quite, no; I'm quite happy for the Wizard to have a 'draft' option, but I don't think it's anything for AFC to worry about. Hence, it could just make a page with on it, and they can submit whenever they like. Until it is submitted, I don't think it needs to be anything to do with the DYK-process at all.  Chzz  ►  16:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * That is what was happening before the draft submission. The problem was, a large number of requests were going through requested moves, and the new users were getting rather hostile feedback. By having a draft system, it allows us to better keep track of the drafts and offer proper feedback. It might be a good idea to have a way for submitters to ask for the draft to be accepted without review. Perhaps a bot could be made to do this. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  18:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Then the bot should also check drafts in the AFC space without having a template on and again: we should remove the third option of the wizard if the user is a) not logged in and b) not autoconfirmed (since it is only confusing). or remove it completely. (Maybe I will do this tomorrow) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 18:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I honestly have never understood the draft submissions myself. They now seem to be a special case of AfC submissions which can't be declined, they can only be put back on hold.  Why can't they just get submitted normally and declined if necessary, and then improved and submitted again, like any other submission?  I'm not sure why there needs to be a separate process.  It's not only confusing for new users, but for AfC reviewers as well.  The whole thing needs to be simplified.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> gab 18:30, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Yep, yep. KISS. Submit -> /accept - done OR decline/ > can't be fixed, or advice, fix -> rinse repeat. No 'on hold while I have a bit of a think' crap.

AFC should be "Is this likely to be deleted? YES/NO. YES - decline, say why. NO - accept it. Is all.  Chzz  ► 23:52, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That is how our guidelines are set up. Unfortunately they aren't always followed and some of the submissions are declined for other reasons (ie. style issues). The draft process was intended to allow new users to create drafts and get feedback. The (fairly defunct) requested feedback process was without reviewers and many of the requests were going through requested moves. The draft process organizes the userspace drafts in one place, allowing us to better keep track of them. It also allows new users to get feedback. There are two different decline parameters in order to keep the draft submissions categorized separately in CAT:DRAFT. There isn't any "on hold" process. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  00:18, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * What is the fundamental difference between a "draft submission" and a "plain old AfC submission" which requires that we treat them as separate entities and apply different rules to them? <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> prattle 00:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No difference, as far as I am concerned. Anyone can submit something to AFC; we'll review it, and 'accept' or 'decline'. That's the only - simple - way that we can operate. And the 'accept/decline' should be based on our evaluation of "is it likely to be deleted?". Is all. Easy. If 'declined', ideally we help 'em fix it if possible; at the least, we explain what the problem is.  Chzz  ► 01:21, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The review process is the same. The only difference is when we review draft submissions and the way we decline them. With the "plain old AfC submissions" the submission is immediately submitted for review. With the "draft submission", it is not reviewed until requested. The template wording reflects this. When I made the draft submission process, my intent was to incorporate as much of WP:FEED as possible. The feedback process doesn't have a "decline" or "accept", they just offer feedback on how to improve an article. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  01:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea that userspacedraft come under the remit of our project, just as a tracking cat, and so that when the drafts are ready they segue nicely into a place where people are prepared to help them; however, the draft submissions which are up for review should just be "pending" like all the others. Doing otherwise is rather silly since the review process is the same. <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫ 02:12, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. Alpha, you've explained the difference in how you've envisioned each type of submission will be treated, but you haven't identified why draft submissions and plain old submissions need to be treated differently. What is the difference between them which necessitates that one is declined in a different manner than the other?  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> soliloquize 02:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The only reason for the different decline parameters is which tracking category the articles go into. With the old system, submissions were simply declined and dumped in a 30,000+ pile of declined submissions. My hope was that by "declining" drafts, they would be placed in CAT:DRAFT and reviewers would be able to help submitters actively working on improving a draft. By using CAT:DRAFT, reviewers could go through and improve the draft submissions, and bring them up to Wikipedia standards. As new users who use the "draft submission" format tend to be the ones who stick around and try and get the submission accepted, having a process that actively assists them would be beneficial. If there is no work done on a given submission after a period of time (a week), the draft would be declined with the "normal" decline template. Unfortunately, I did not anticipate the huge increase in submissions as a result of sending userspace drafts through AfC. If we had more reviewers to keep the backlog down, the draft idea might be feasible. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  03:11, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree completely with your outlook on the issue of drafts Alpha Quadrant... but why not just make sure that all declined submissions are available as drafts and people are encouraged to keep working on them? Personally I think the advantage of AFC is that, unlike in the mainspace, we are never forced to say, "No, declined forever." We are simply saying, "Not yet." Even for notability problems, we can say that, because it's possible for new sources to appear. "Not yet, please keep editing." is a much more appealing message to authors that need to keep working on their submissions, and thus is more likely to actually encourage them to fix problems. The word declined should not be in our vocabulary here. <font style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling &bull; talk   04:59, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * @Steven Walling - without wishing to sound at all offensive, I have to ask: have you ever actually accepted/declined AFC's? If not, I really think you should spend a few hours reviewing some.
 * We do need the word "declined" in out vocabulary. A significant number of contributions are along the lines of;
 * "Me and my BFF bob have started a band in our class. WE ROCK!"
 * FooTunes is a very funny cartoon about cats and fish. Check it out! http://www.mysp4ce.com/footunes worth a brief google, but I'm assuming for purposes of this example, there's no N here
 * Sally Anna NewBabay was born on 30 November 2011.
 * Cheap sausages. Special offers. www.cheapsausages.co.xx
 * A LlamaFish is half llama, half-fish. They eat cheese and live under my bed
 * Supercoolninjadude <linked to 'facebook'> was born on 1/1/2000. Goes to Foo School in Baatown; he plays Call of Honour in the Baz clan.
 * <Title: Why cats are nice> They are lovely and fluffy. Cats like being stroked. Give them tuna.
 * Barrys online phone shop sell phones cheaper than anywhere else!
 * Suggesting those users just need to add references is unconstructive, and actually can cause more frustration than a straight "decline".
 * In the last example, if there is absolutely no sign of notability (from some googling), if it's clear there is no realistic chance of notability, then getting them to work on adding 'references' - which will very likely not be acceptable - is worse advice than explaining it "does not appear to be notable".  Chzz  ► 12:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * @Alpha Q, I understand the idea of trying to help with "drafts". However, I just think - until submitted - that is nothing to do with AFC. puts pages into Category:Userspace drafts. I do not see a point in separating out "AFC drafts" from that. I think it just causes an unnecessary complication; I cannot see a benefit.
 * Hence, I do not understand "a way for submitters to ask for the draft to be accepted without review. Currently, lots of 'drafts' are made live without ever going through AFC - as you know, commonly users ask for help on our user talks, or get help over IRC, and sometimes we can just say it's OK, and either make it live for them, or tell them how. That's fine - but in those cases, it is still "reviewed" - because we wouldn't move a page live without checking it, and being reasonably confident it is unlikely to be deleted. New user articles do not *have* to go through AFC; it is one way for them to get help,and highly recommended - but it is by no means the only way. Yes, new users might go via RM; or they might dump an article on the HD or on my/your/random-person's talk; yes, sometimes they get bitten - but I don't think we can solve that through this 'afc draft' notion; it's an endemic problem. The obvious answer to it is, of course, to make all new users submit articles via AFC - but despite conseneus, WMF refused to let that happen. I'm not mentioning that as "sour grapes" - it's just where we are at, and I think all we can do is to suggest people use AFC, and deal with the reviews as best we can.
 * Of course, the 'biting' and lack of great help for new users is a much bigger issue - the entire project is far too focused on MMPORPG warn/block and NPP/CSD "Whack a mole" - there is a shortage of people who will go the extra-mile to help new user, when it is so much easier to just click a button to slap on templates. But, that is a much wider problem, and "AFC draft submissions" isn't going to solve it.  Chzz  ► 12:53, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * @Sonia - I disagree. A page with can be submitted to AFC, with the one-click 'submit'. Until it is submitted for review, I don't see it as part of the AFC process. I'd like to keep AFC as a simple "Submit it -> accept or decline. If declined, you can submit it again." - if we keep the AFC process along a manageable basis, like that, then it can work. In the past, we had a problem with "pending" submissions hanging around for very long times - "we" reviewers couldn't do anything with them, yet they sat in the AFC queues; that, in itself, caused backlogs, and caused the system to be much more difficult to deal with. After debate, we did away with 'pending' status, and decided to just have 'accept' / 'decline'. It's my belief that that is easier for users to understand. We need to be clear about what a 'draft' is (to me: any non-live page that is being developed as a potential article), and what AFC is (to me: a way of asking others to review your draft, decide if it is acceptable, if it is: make it live, if it's not: say why). I believe firmly in keeping that as simple as possible; there's quite enough things to confuse new users as it is :-)  Chzz  ►  12:44, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 1 - Allow AfC template in User namespace
I think both Alpha Quadrant and Chzz have valid points. On the one hand, AfC shouldn't stray too far from its original mission, and shouldn't become overcomplicated with complex rules and procedures. On the other hand, new registered editors who create userspace drafts and submit them for review do create far better articles than the average AfC submission from an IP, and deserve a little extra TLC. How can we reconcile the two? Here's my idea:

Currently the AfC template is only valid in the Wikipedia talk namespace. What if we also allowed it to exist in the User namespace. That way, users who are creating userspace drafts could just slap it on their draft when they're done (instead of moving to WT), and we'll come over and accept it or decline it, and optionally give some feedback or fix some mistakes. The template could be re-designed such that it detects when it has been placed in the User namespace and displays different wording (and could even look radically different) in that situation. The decline version of the template could even drop the article into a different category. I believe this would solve the 2 major problems:


 * 1) AfC shouldn't be overcomplicated - The template would be used by reviewers in an identical way as it is used for normal submissions. You put a d in for decline, or you move the article to mainspace if you accept.  Even the AfC review scripts should work without adjustment (unless they need to be adjusted to allow for use outside of the Wikipedia talk namespace, which is a minor adjustment).
 * 2) Userspace drafters deserve more attention - The updated process would allow for keeping userspace drafts separate from AfC submissions, and if the reviewer notices that it's in the User namespace, it would at least give them the option of providing some additional feedback, or putting a little more time into fixing problems than they might normally do.

I think it's a big improvement over the current experimental draft system, which is complicated enough that I just steer clear of draft submissions altogether. Any comments? <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> speak 15:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If we did that, we would be essentially be doing exactly what we do now, only in User: namespace. We could very easily merge the AfC draft system into the "normal" system. When I set it up, I thought it would be important to keep drafts in a separate category and treat the drafts as if they were userspace drafts, just without moving them. The benefit of using AfC to store drafts, it is easier to keep track of submissions if they are all in the same place. With userspace drafts in userspace, they are scattered and difficult to find. Some new users remove the AfC/userspace template, making it impossible for us to find it. Unless they find help, the submission will usually go through requested moves. The editors at requested moves already consider userspace drafts our responsibility, so they usually send the user here. The problem with requested moves is that some users are not helpful and they leave bitey messages for the new user. Whereas, in AfC, we can just do a bot check to see if any of the subpages lack the template. Therefore finding any missing submissions. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  15:34, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Eh? "the AfC template is only valid in the Wikipedia talk namespace" - it works fine elsewhere. Just, we then move stuff. It works fine. No problem.  Chzz  ► 01:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess you're right, it's just not intended to be used outside of the Wikipedia talk namespace. I think if we made it work differently in the User talk space, we could have a viable alternative to the current userspace draft approval system.  I don't think we can worry ourselves about users removing AfC templates from their userspace drafts, there's little we can do to prevent that.  AQ says that "If we did that, we would be essentially be doing exactly what we do now, only in User: namespace" and you're largely correct.  The only change would be that the accepting/declining procedures for reviewers would be the same for both cases.  There wouldn't need to be two different procedures.  And, users wouldn't have to move their drafts out of their userspace.  Just a proposal, it may not work, or it may be a jumping off point.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> confabulate 01:57, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this. I think we're over-thinking things.

A 'user space draft' of any kind can be submitted to AFC - and it'd be reviewed, and the user informed of the outcome. If the page happened to be elsewhere, a bot would move it to WT:AFC (in the vast majority of cases; and when it cannot, we can)

If the draft has on top of it, they can 'submit' for AFC using the prefilled one-click link. If they make it via the Wizard, it'll have that.

We need to keep this as simple as possible for our new users. By attempting to handle some user-space drafts via AFC - and, indeed, to treat them differently - we're making things much more complicated than necessary (I think).

So again, I ask, can we just keep it simple? In terms of AFC itself, we do not need to worry about user-space drafts, or how users develop their drafts; of course, if people want to help them with things, that's great - but not part of AFC.  Chzz  ► 15:05, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The "draft submissions" category is just a reiteration of the old Hold category. Please get rid of it already, it's extra work and drafts should be made in the userspace or document editing/writing beforehand and then submitted for review. This just encourages complacency and shoddy work, more so than what currently goes through AfC atm. —  James ( Talk •  Contribs ) • 12:29am • 14:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've removed it (I think/hope).  Chzz  ► 06:47, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The AfC draft is not an "on hold" submission. Until submitted, they aren't even pending review. The system is not unlike the userspace draft. The only difference being we are able to keep track of the submissions better. As discussed below, we have a solution for removing stale/inactive drafts to the decline category. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  07:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * My point here is, until they are submitted, they're not submissions.  Chzz  ► 09:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed, until submitted, they are not submissions. We just keep track of them at CAT:DRAFT. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  17:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * But once submitted, they should be indistinguishable from regular submissions, and the accept/decline process should be no different from the reviewer's point of view. This is the crux of the issue.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#5a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> spout 18:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The review process is indistinguishable from regular submissions. The AfC helper script now automatically declines with the separate draft parameter. Unless the reviewer was reviewing manually, they wouldn't notice anything different. The draft parameter just allows us to keep track of what is, and what isn't a draft. Ideally, it would also allow us to keep an eye on active drafts. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  18:47, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> converse 17:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * ...but, that's not quite true, is it? Because, for a start, they look different, when they're pending; they say "This is a draft, not a regular AFC" (or something), are in a different colour, and it advises that they get treated differently. It's just one more complication on the top of an already excessively complicated system. I'm absolutely sure one of the main reasons we don't get enough help in AFC is because of all the over-complex template/systems.  Chzz  ► 13:51, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

propose removal of the third Wizrad option to create directly a page
I propose that we remove completely the option of the Article Wizard that a page can be created directly out of the Wizard. Every experienced user knows how to do that or should or otherwise should use the wizard! By the way: since I couldn't find any option to hide that option if the user is not autoconfirmed it will only confuse new/unexperienced users. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 14:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong support - the wizard is for new users; over 70% of their articles are deleted. Plus, yes, the 'create live' option is misleading; I don't believe there is currently a technical way to only show that for registered users - and the screen an anon gets is very confusing - it says, "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact title. Please search for Fnaa in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings." then gives options to "1. Log in or create an account to start the Fnaa article.", "2. Submit the content that you wish to have created" - which takes them to Articles for creation, losing their work-so-far and dumping them onto yet-another-page-of-instructions, 3. "Search for "Fnaa" in existing articles", "4. Look for "Fnaa" in Wiktionary, our sister dictionary project.", "5. Look for "Fnaa" in the Wikimedia Commons, our repository for free images, music, sound, and video.", "6. Look for pages within Wikipedia linking to this article.", then "   If you expected a page to be here, it has probably been deleted (see Why was my page deleted? for possible reasons). You may wish to check the deletion log.", "If a page was recently created here, it may not yet be visible because of a delay in updating the database; wait a few minutes and try the purge function.".
 * It then shows the standard-template plus anything they added, saying "You can view and copy the source of this page:" - ie the edit-box-you-cannot-save.
 * It is all ludicrously over-complicated. See my comments here from April 2010, #Why does this process exist?
 * "As Wikipedia matures, we shift focus from "quantity" to "quality". [..] It is no longer a reasonable expectation for any truly new user to write a new article, from scratch, and for it to conform to basic policy and guidelines without help" .  Chzz  ► 14:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment I have noticed that a several experienced users have gone through the wizard. A few of them got confused when we made the changes before. It might be a good idea to create an "advanced wizard" page for them with the ability to create articles that way. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  15:12, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Most of these users were using the userspacedraft template and hit Submit, not reading correctly. I really doubt that anybody is using the third Wizard option and if they use it, I would like to know how many pages (percentage) get shortly after that tagged for deletion/prod... Even if they then would use the pending draft/classic wizard option, and get a review, nothing will prevent a reviewer to decline/accept it. There is only a really small amount of workload more for us - nothing special except taht we might get some more good submissions for reviewing. And you know: the more people watchlisting an article the better is the preventing for vandalism (similar to that: the more look directly over the article, the more fixes get into the article like markup fixes/style fixes). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 15:22, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I posted a note at WT:NPP since they are directly involved. The related page (FYI) is Article_wizard/Ready_for_submission. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 15:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Ignore bots
Hi, what if we put on ignore all edits done by bots so that they wouldn't be listed as last editors of afc submission anywhere (submissions / template etc.)? It looks pretty weird since my bot is listed as last editor of most of submissions. Thanks Petrb (talk) 14:38, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you mean at WP:AFC/S? Good idea... <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 02:44, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

World Nugget Challenge
Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/World_Nugget_Challenge

So, I deleted an article via CSD earlier on this topic, and as I am won't to do, looked at the user's contributions, and saw tht the article had been an AFC. And I came here, and declined it. And the user is continuing to edit the article extensively. Im like 99.9% sure this page is either a joke, or something clearly not notable. I put a message on the author's talk page, saying I thought they were wasting their time, and if they had any questions, but they didn't respond, and continue to edit the page. The page has been deleted, and declined, so one side of me says if they repost it again, its approaching vandalism. On the other hand this could be just a confused n00b. Someone else take a look please. Gaijin42 (talk) 23:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * None of the "sources" has any connection to the article. No Google hits whatsoever (except our deleted artilce). I do not believe any such competition held this decade, no matter how silly or insignificant, would generate not a single Google hit. I cannot imagine how much confusion it would take to believe in good faith that an encyclopedia would be interested in made-up "articles". I have issued a stronger warning. Huon (talk) 01:28, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There's really no harm in having it sit in AfC forever whether they continue to tweak it or not, so I wouldn't call it vandalism. If they resubmit it again and again and it becomes a nuisance then we can have it protected as we have in the past; otherwise I'd say just let it be. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 09:53, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Huh?
I don't understand the point of Articles for creation. Why not just be bold? Perhaps someone could improve the introductory paragraph. ··gracefool&#9786; 01:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Articles for Creation is for the new users who can't create articles, because there was a technical limitation added to the software (only autoconfirmed editors move the pages and stuff). We provide them a chance to create the article and have it reviewed before going live. ~  Matthewrbowker   <sup style="color:#0000aa;">Say hi!  02:04, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed, and that was a direct result of the Seigenthaler incident. It is also worth noting that over 70% of live articles made by new (but registered) users are deleted; I would rather they got help and advice via AFC than get a great many template warning messages.  Chzz  ► 05:05, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, the project now explains itself, vastly improving the page. ··gracefool&#9786; 23:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Getting data about which style of notification works best
Hi everyone. Maryana and I have a proposal for the AfC process. It shouldn’t take any work from you all, but we want your input and experience with reviewing. Sorry if this is TL;DR...


 * What: We want to include the user talk notifications given to those who’ve submitted at AfC as a part of the WP:UWTEST taskforce.
 * Why: AfC is really important, especially since submissions have gone way up. However the process works, every editor who submits something deserves to be treated with respect and thanked for at least trying to do something positive, even if they fail miserably. I think the recent changes to Afc decline reflect the consensus around that. In terms of what we'd be measuring: I'd like to do an A/B test that gives us clear data about whether changing the language of these templates can have an impact on actions like...
 * whether we can get more authors to really improve their drafts
 * whether we can encourage more people to edit elsewhere in the wiki (before, during and after their submission)
 * improving the amount and kind of feedback editors give the AfC group
 * When: the time span depends entirely on how it will take us to get to a statistically significant sample. Generally this means between 14-30 days. However long it is, we set a target date to stop a test and do analysis, as you can see from the lists of templates on our taskforce pages.
 * How: The easiest thing do to would be to use the new test templates in User:Timotheus_Canens/afchelper4.js and in Afc submission, though it would be great if anyone who adds the templates manually would use them too.

As for exactly what templates we want to test... We’ve gotten a few community members to draft their template ideas. You can find them in the draft space. We still need help authoring stuff though, and Maryana and I will need to test the exact templates to make sure all the markup substitutes correctly when delivered.

Please take a look and let us know what you think – we’d like to test a very short, simplified version that doesn’t even look like a template (following on previous test results that suggest personalization increases the efficacy of template messages), and perhaps one other version (more graphical?).

Thanks for all the help so far, <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   21:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I rather think that the people best-placed to decide which notification "works best" are the people who process lots of AFCs, and that it should not be based soley on some 'A/B test' because there is more to it than the statistics that that will provide
 * "every editor who submits something deserves to be treated with respect and thanked for at least trying to do something positive" - no, they don't if e.g. they post "ALL ADMINZ SHOULD DIE!!!"
 * That graph seems to indicate about 300 AFCs in one day near the end of November, and then about 150 the next day (the last entry); that does not seem to correspond with the data on WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Statistics. Is the graph correct? Does it include redirects? (I do know that the numbers have increased massively; I'm just not sure whether that graph is accurate or a fair reflection of the situation)
 * We could easily improve things, if new users were directed through AFC instead of creating live articles - over 70% of which are deleted. However, WMF rejected the consensus shown in WP:ACTRIAL. If that had not been rejected, then NPP would be reduced, and I'd hope more people (from NPP) would be available to help with AFC. Most of the ways that AFC could be improved simply requires more manpower; if we had more users working on them, then they'd be able to leave better responses and spend more time actually assisting people with building new articles. I do accept that there could be significant technical improvements, but I am not convinced that this is the best approach to making such improvements.
 * "afchelper4.js" does not contain templates. It simply modifies the same templates used on all submissions, to determine their status. I strongly suggest you actually process a number of AFCs, so that you can understand how the process actually works.
 * You have not explained how you intend to make an A/B trial operate within AFC. How do you plan to control the percentages?
 * Do you intend to propose a trial and obtain consensus, or will you just go ahead with it?  Chzz  ► 00:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Reviewing a lot of AFCs does not give you data-processing superpowers. Hard figures are really helpful in making an informed decision – we could argue all day about whether the decline templates should be red or grey, for example, but an A/B test says categorically which is more effective. I believe Steven was proposing that afchelper4.js would be altered to randomly pick between two alternate versions of certain templates, which is fully compatible with how it works now. That's how the trial will operate.
 * However I do share your concern that some (OK, lots and lots) of submissions will never be suitable, e.g. those that are obviously not notable. The wording needs to keep to a fine line between not being discouraging and not being falsely encouraging; it's an all-purpose message and shouldn't imply that minor changes are all that's needed to get an article created if that's not true, even if that wording has no measurable effect on user retention etc. It may be that people submitting unworkable articles will "naturally drop off" as someone working on the drafts put it, but that doesn't make it OK for us to waste their time and ours by being misleading. If absolutely necessary we could fork the templates into an encouraging one and one that is a more categorical decline, though I'd like to avoid that extra level of complexity. I'm not saying be rude or bitey, just straightforward. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 09:30, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The Earwig made an stat a few weeks (or was it days?) ago that showed us, that ~10% get into mainspace (mostly after some declines) - the rest is as Chzz already said: simply not usable for wikipedia. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 17:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Joe and Mabdul: yes, I agree that it's not a good idea to put our heads in the sand about the fact that many declines are never going to make into mainspace. I definitely don't think we should be sacrificing simplicity and clarity for the sake of friendliness. In any case, the test will tell us whether any change we make in the messages can have an impact on how many authors actually continue to edit, improve, and even resubmit declined articles. I am not predicting a huge percent difference at all, but I'm hopeful.
 * As for Chzz's direct questions: I explain above how, and I think you're familiar with our testing method in general. We're used to adapting our testing method for each particular system and making any necessary adjustments as we go. On percentages: if you mean controlling the percentages of default versus any new draft, that is why the templates are randomly assigned with a parser function, even if you notify someone by hand. The amount each template is applied is roughly equal, as you can you see in the test we're about halfway through with SDPatrolBot. If you mean controlling the percentages of decline messages versus onhold etc... we don't want to control that. The only variable we want to alter is the content of the templates, not how often the AfC process uses them. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   20:23, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The more I have been thinking about this, the more I have been considering that maybe we should try and reword Template:AFC submission/comments. I'd probably say the comments regarding notability, sourcing, and neutrality are fairly confusing for new editors. The comments regarding notability are especially confusing. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  21:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * @Joey Roe, unfortunately, real-life is rarely a simple case of a choice between A and B, with a simple statistic that determines that B is "better" - particularly from on a short-term trail. Statistics can be a useful tool, but can also be extremely misleading. It may seem that, if we show that one template-message leads to a few more editors staying on Wikipedia for a little longer, that that in itself proof that one template is better than the other. I'm sorry, but it is not so simple.
 * Let me take some rather extreme examples, to illustrate. We could put a "free book voucher" on the template, and presumably people would like that. But there is a cost there, and the cost/benefit may not be worthwhile. There is a "cost", in some sense, to any change - whether the "cost" be the efforts required by the system, or good-will, or quality of article output.
 * We could make a lovely, warm welcoming template, which said we don't care about references. Users might be encouraged in the short-term, only to discover that all their later edits were rejected, and that their talk page was suddenly filled with warning messages. The users might stick around for a short while longer, but would it benefit the project?
 * We could find that one template means 3% more users stay on Wikipedia for 4% longer. But a year later, we might find that 50% of those users had become angry socking vandals, and not been a net-positive.
 * Perhaps more importantly: we might adapt the template to be more helpful, and it could create excessive work for people actually reviewing the articles, because the users expected more from reviewers. That might increase new editors a little, but could lead to loss in established editors who have made significant contributions to the project. This, last, is a real possibility; as you can see, we are desperately short of skilled editors who can review AFCs. Some changes to the system might make it easier for new users, but more difficult for the reviewer. There is a danger there, because when long-term experienced users get disillusioned with Wikipedia, they often give up entirely - a massive loss to the project.
 * It's not as simple as A-B, although I fully accept it is possible to get some useful information from such a trial - as long as we are careful. One of the most critical aspects in A-B testing is to determing how results can be meaningfully evaluated, before starting a trial. A 30-day trial might demonstrate a few % more editors staying with Wikipedia for a few weeks, making a few more edits - which might indicate we should change to a certain alternative template; but it cannot show whether those readers stay with us for years, adding value, and pure statistical analysis will not show the actual net benefit to the project.  Chzz  ► 21:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Few things: first, we don't literally just A/B test. We have often done a more complex and varied test than two options head-to-head, it just depends on how complicated you want to make it. Our first test with Huggle was with 8 different measured variables, IIRC. Second, I actually agree that simple statistical tests on whether it made more people edit in general is not sufficient, and that you have to track overall participation in the long term. Our tests have so far measured several positive and negative outcomes depending on the test area, and we've so far done a lot qualitative assessment of not just what happens after a warning, but whether it's desirable. I'm happy to lay out more of a plan about post-hoc analysis if that's what you're interested in. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   22:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Per your request for outlining more about analysis etc. we'll put lots more details up at WikiProject user warnings/Testing/Articles for creation. Please comment everyone. :) <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   20:54, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't see how A/B testing  can prove anything. New user retention stats are a contentious issue anyway because most  new pages nowadays appear to  created by  WP:SPA who  have no  intention  of becoming  Wikipedians, and this is an issue  where  WP:ACTRIAL would have provided some hard stats to  which  genuine metrics could have been applied.  ACTRIAL, NPP Zoom, or Article Creation  Flow are the only solutions that  will  have an impact on  the increasing  load at  AfC and NPP and rewording  the templates is not  going  to recruit  new AfC reviewers, While it's possible that  friendlier templates may possibly get  Wikipedia a friendlier reputation, we either have to remain firm with  new users, or channel  developer time to  more concrete solutions such  as Article Creation  Flow and NPP Zoom. In the absence of   any  visible progress on  these two  solutions (if they  haven't  in  fact already  been abandoned), there are suggestions elsewhere  that a new initiative to  implement  ACTRIAL may  be in the pipeline. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The point of a test would not simply to be improving rates of new editor retention. It would actually be more focused on whether more submissions get successfully through AfC and other content-related metrics. If we designed templates that improved the rate at which AFC authors only edited outside of their submissions, or if their edits counts increased but the rate of successful submissions fell significantly (i.e. either ineffective or unconstructive edits) then that would not be an outcome that would suggest we need to change AfC templates permanently in any way. As for the ACTRIAL and feature-related comments: they're not really my responsibility. The point of testing the templates is to simply improve their effectiveness at encouraging the kinds of edits we want from AfC submitters, not a change or fix for the larger workflow. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   05:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * A user creating a single article may get round to creating another one half a year or a year later. Every new user is proud of their first article. It's a big thing. If that article gets accepted and sticks around, users identify with it, and the idea of writing another one occurs naturally if the experience of writing the first one was positive. Checking how many articles make it into mainspace after initial rejection, or conversely how many are abandoned after initial rejection, seems like a meaningful metric. -- J N  466  03:56, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * What would "more submissions get successfully through AfC" demonstrate? We could make a massive improvement to that statistic, just by accepting everything automatically. There would be zero backlog at AFC, too. Of course, it'd mean a hell of a lot of sub-standard/copyvio/unreferenced/nasty crap, but hey - it'd make for encouraging statistics.  Chzz  ► 08:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

User and Talk Pages Submitted
I thought I would lend a hand here to get rid of some of the back log so someone could approve my submission. I'm trying to stick to declining the no-brainers, since I'm just getting my Wiki-legs. I noticed User and Talk pages apparently being accidentally tagged and moved. Not sure of the best way to put them back where they belong???

Sorting by submission time and date of course is not working correctly. I'm guessing, doing programming myself, that this is not an easy fix or it would have been done, or maybe there has never been this much back log?

Thanks. --I B d Shank (Talk-Talk) 02:14, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If a user submits a draft that is in userspace, a bot automatically moves it to "Wikipedia:Articles for creation/...whatever" (if it can). It notifies the user of the new location, and it leaves a redirect. There is no need to move it back.
 * There has never been this much of a backlog.  Chzz  ► 04:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If we don't do something, they will be in the Pending Submissions list forever. The funny thing is that the history for User talk:Famousdog does not show it being moved.  There may be a bug.  I find a nowikied submission tag in the last section of the talk page.  --I B d Shank (Talk-Talk) 16:02, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I wonder what you are talking about. That history page showns when it was moved to which location. That revision shows, that the submit tag was accidentally added by User:Jsivira on that user talk page and shortly "nowiki"ed by User:Famousdog (before our bot could move it). So where is the problem now? The system is clear: if there is a "submit this submission for a review" on any page, then the bot moves the page to the correct location. That can produce some accidentally false-positives, but can't be prevented, e.g. many new and unexperienced users starting a draft on their userpage (so User:blabla...) and submit it. The talkpage is normally not moved in that case. Only the page where the submission template is on, get moved. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 16:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh and something other: please don't ix up the 'pending drafts' with the actual drafts which waiting for a review. Right now - this is true, correct me if I'm wrong - we have no page listing up the drafts (by date) which are not waiting for a review except the full Category:Draft_AfC_submissions list. But this can be(and should be) fixed. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 17:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry if I have done something wrong. I have been using WP:AFC/S.  Is this not correct?  --I B d Shank (Talk-Talk) 18:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * since nothing was changed/moved: no you didn't make anything wrong. Check the review guidelines and somewhere here on this page (search for tim) is a JS tool helper which really saves you time! Happy reviewing! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:34, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

After looking at some submissions that others have approved, maybe someone should review my declines for 'lack of content' or 'not notable'. Perhaps I was a bit conservative. I will be gone for awhile. I feel addiction setting in, and I have to work to eat. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 17:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * On a semi-related note, I've fixed the sorting bug mentioned above – the statistics tables now sort times correctly. &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  07:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It's wonderful.  This will help to get the oldest submissions reviewed sooner, I hope.  That Java program is great, makes reviewing almost a pleasure.  I noticed it will hang sometimes, and if I enter comments, they seem to evaporate.  But, not a big deal now that I know the commenting doesn't work.  Overall, very slick. :-)--I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 08:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I just kinda live with that problem. If I've written a long comment/reason, I try to remember to do a quick "SELECT ALL, COPY" before I click the 'decline'... so that if it does bomb out, I can just go back and PASTE. Of course, I often forget, and end up re-typing it.  Chzz  ► 14:27, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Category:Draft AfC submissions
Currently Category:Draft AfC submissions holds all draft submissions. The idea was to have a place for drafts actively undergoing work. Drafts inactive after a period of time (arbitrarily one week) would be declined using the normal process (with the |d| parameter). Due to the backlog, no one has been able to go through and check to see if any of the drafts are inactive. I would like to propose that ArticlesforCreationBot go through the category once a week, and automatically mark inactive drafts as delined. The bot would be doing the following I have spoken with Petrb, he said it shouldn't be too difficult to get the bot to perform this task. Thoughts? Alpha_Quadrant   (talk)  20:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Changing the |t| parameter to a |d|. |t| articles are not pending review anyway. Marking them as declined would prevent CAT:DRAFT from being cluttered with inactive work.
 * Leaving a comment on the submission stating that it has been declined. (Possibly adding Category:Inactive draft AfC submissions at the end of the comment, so that we can continue to track the drafts)
 * Leaving a comment on the draft writer's talk page, explaining how to submit when they are ready.
 * Possibly logging the drafts marked as delined to a log page.
 * I feel like a week is rather short. People working on these are volunteers just like any other editor, and I can't count the number of times I've accidentally passed something by because I was busy during the week. How about we decline everything inactive after 14 days? <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   20:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 14 days would indeed work. A week was just an arbitrary amount of time. We could probably even go with 30 days, given the fact in the last four months, we have not moved a single draft out of CAT:DRAFT, and there are still only ~2,000 submission there. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  20:46, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * 1) support after 14 days. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support after 14 days, AfC has been overloading consistently throughout the last few months and it's quite disconcerting. —  James ( Talk •  Contribs ) • 12:21am • 14:21, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - If there are 2007 articles there now, assuming random distribution, that would leave 454 articles. However, I think declined is too negative.   How about "Removed from Submission List because of Inactivity".  I think beginning editors, including me, are intimidated by the scope of the Wiki and they should get as little negativity as possible.  Why can the article not be moved back into user space where the editor has been comfortable working on it for the last day, week, month, or year?


 * It appears some Bot or Daemon is already doing something.  The articles are in chronological order.  I checked though the list, and the oldest is 4 October 2011, 68 days, and they appear to be contiguous thereafter.   I have to assume something is happening to them after 68 days.  The header information also says that articles tagged with "O" have not been edited in the last week.  There are no "O" tagged articles.  I think the hooks are already there, just broke or misconfigured. I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 15:45, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * In some cases maybe an immediate move may be requested. This will allow editorial disagreement to occur on the User's talk page, rather than inside the article, which I have seen in one instance on the submission's list.I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 20:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Confused newbie: What happens after an article is moved to AfC?
Hello, I'm as newbie as newbie gets and, while fairly adept at following instructions, confess to finding Wikipedia a bit confusing. On December 2, I submitted Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hervey White; I've not received any editor's comments, but see that other articles are usually addressed in a matter of a few hours/days. Of course in the print submission world, things take much longer but... Have I mis-clicked, mis-fired, missed something in the submission process? The only activity I've seen so far is a wrongly-identified fair-use image, which I hope I've rectified. Thanks much.Pastrychick (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You've done everything right, don't be discouraged. Usually it's the worst submissions which are addressed in a matter of a few hours, since it's so easy to quickly look at those articles and hit the "Decline" button on them.  The rare article which is actually written decently well and has a chance of being accepted (like yours appears to be) sometimes take a bit longer for a brave soul to review.  Sometimes it's just the luck of the draw; if you happen to submit your article when someone is actively reviewing, you might get lucky and get an instant review.  Otherwise, if you submit during a dead period, your submission might get swept under the rug and go unnoticed for a few days.  Don't read into it too much, your article will get reviewed soon.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#a00 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> prattle 00:58, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Three Articles left in November
I'm not sure what to do with them, and everyone else seems to be hoping they go away, me also. Maybe a very wise veteran could handle these. Playboys gang the submitter wants it his way. Fulbright Austria, we have Fulbright Program with organizations in 155 counties. Do we make a category Fulbright Programs by Country to fill or leave this one article through. Lastly, Pinching Penny I don't think is notable, and the references seem to confirm my suspicion.

Should we temporarily change the submission template to say days or weeks instead of hours or days? Before they set fire to the place? Thanks. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 03:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess they all got done; I cleared all AFC's a few days ago.  Chzz  ► 11:37, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Categorization problem
For some reason, draft submissions are showing up in the non-draft submission category. Mangoe (talk) 15:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That is because I merged the parameters. Now that the AfC helper script was altered, there is no noticeable difference in reviewing. It allows us to keep all submissions organized chronologically. Other than the way they are declined, pending draft and normal are both reviewed the same way. There really isn't a reason to keep them categorized separately in the review queue. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  17:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, the template continues to say, in bold red letters, that there is a difference, which is why I've been ignoring anything marked as a draft. Mangoe (talk) 19:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually there was a good reason. Excuse me as I stick my nose in here.  I'm new to helping the Wiki (I use it a zillion times a day since I found the Wiki as I do R&D now), so I have hesitated to comment much except when it was relevant to my reviewing.  I do have a few decades of experience in organizing, managing, work-flow, and generally getting things done.  The list in submissions had the file size, which helped a lot.  The reason is that I could take 10 minutes and knock a lot of junk off the list quickly.  If I knew I had some time to actually review an article then I would take the oldest from the list.  The "complete list" link on the Submissions Page points to the "Category:AfC submissions with missing AfC template" which says "build and maintain a list of pages primarily for the sake of the list itself."  There appears to be a lot of list making for the sake of having junk lying around.  If it's missing a template, then add it or move it, don't list it.  I know I don't know everything which might happen during a submission, but it seems to make sense to me that if an article is declined, move it back to user space.  Let them keep the junk, don't let it clutter up AfC.--I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 15:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a voice of reason. I've got quite a lot of experience in that area, too - and if there is one rule I have learned, above all others, it is: keep it simple.  Chzz  ► 13:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * "There appears to be a lot of list making for the sake of having junk lying around. If it's missing a template, then add it or move it, don't list it. I know I don't know everything which might happen during a submission, but it seems to make sense to me that if an article is declined, move it back to user space." The problem is, we actually don't know where which page has no template on, so Alpha Quadrant had the idea, that our bot can tag them regular. As you already might have found out, many pages were already declined and most of them were lying around also for a long time (say years). For that reason we created a new template and tried to improve the actual situation. Very likely we won't get such a big "sub"-backlog (say on this list/cat) because that was the first run! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Category: AfC submissions with missing AfC template
I have looked into this category, and I think I understand the problem with this category being here. We need to clean it out, and figure out some way for it to never exist again. Many are very old. Many have no user talk page. Many have almost no content. Many have considerable content. Some may still be watched. Is there a procedure for handling these? It they are being watched will that definitely appear in "What links to this page?

I think: 1. If they are watched or have a user talk page, add a template to the page and to their talk page giving them 30 days to request if be moved back to user space, submit it, or delete it. 2. If we can determine it is being watched, add the same template to the page only. 3. If it has no user talk nor is being watched, and there is little content that would never pass review, mark for speed delete. 4. If there is considerable content, again put a 30day warning on the page, and hope. At what point does the writer relinquish his copyrights would be the next question? If it has been abandoned for, let's say 90 day with no links, can we just speedy delete it?

Is there a template for this? Should I make one? We can then patrol the category from time to time and speedy delete any template older than 30 days. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 21:25, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I tried reviewing. Does not work of course because the incorrect template is there. These are recent submissions. How to handle?? What do I tell the author to do, when I don't know what to do? --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 22:03, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Addition problems WP:AFC/S says "please help by reviewing also these, or inform author that they are being ignored as incorrectly submitted"
 * If you press the "click here" button on the template that indicates that it's not submitted, it will lead you to a page that will add the AfC template (but not remove the "Wrong AfC Submission" template). Then you can review it.--Slon02 (talk) 01:30, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Not quite. Clicking appears to add it to the submission category without the proper template.  I assume that it will shortly be added to the AfC submissions list with today's date and the proper template.  --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 01:59, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I was correct, it is now in the list to be reviewed. It was last edited in July, I think.   Very patient people.  But, submitted with my nick at the submitter.  Can't be help, I guess.  --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 02:04, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * That's an inconvenience, but I've been going back to the history and replacing my name with the actual author's to make it easier to notify.--Slon02 (talk) 02:43, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You can do that?? I'm impressed. :-)   However, they are also showing up on my talk page, and I don't like the bad reviews. :-p  Maybe 10% can be speedy deleted, but that still leaves 1000 articles which will fall into overloaded submissions.  1. We can find a better solution.  2. We can brute force it this time, but we need to stop it from happening.  I'm trying to figure out how it happened to begin with.  There appear to be many from 11 December.  Who was minding the store that day?   Could we(proverbial) script up something simple(mini-bot) to kick them back into user space?  Just thinkin' out loud.  --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 03:24, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not a bot expert. However, in the AfC template, the "u=" part (in between ts and ns) controls whom the template considers to be the article author. By changing that to the proper author, the "inform author" function works properly.--Slon02 (talk) 03:57, 17 December 2011 (UTC);
 * Unfortunately, I believe that template is attached at the same time the user is notified his article has been submitted and the article moved, i.e., it only affects changes after it has been moved. Which can work, maybe...  I will have my talk filled with submission notices, which can be handled...  I submitted one article which was already approved and moved to main space in November.  I tagged it for speed deletion.  I could not find a delete template for "Bot F...-up".   It appears to me so far that everything in 'AfC submissions with missing AfC template' has baggage associated with it in one way or another.  :-(  IMHO, we can not just "click and submit" without checking where all the pieces of the error landed, or we may have zombies popping up all over the place. Is there a IRC channel for AfC?  I have a computer here, not doing much at the moment, I could hook him in 24/7.  WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?  :-)--I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 05:11, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The articles in that category appear to mostly be ones that were created in the "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/", but the people who created them never added the templates. The IRC channel for AfC is #wikipedia-en-afc.--Slon02 (talk) 05:29, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool! Thanks.  I'm afraid if the articles in this category get ignored we could lose a lot of valuable contributions, or not. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 05:43, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

what were the jobs as a knight in the middle ages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.244.95.75 (talk) 00:42, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Well... It appears we can get the stuff out of 'AfC submissions with missing AfC template' if we are very careful.  Somehow, there are pieces of everything in there.  The procedure that seems to work(most of the time) is:
 * 1) Check to make sure the file is an article and not already in Main Space. If it is not an article see if you can figure out where it should go and put it there.  If it exists or you don't know where to put it, and it does not seem important, mark it with.
 * 2) If it is not in Main Space and is an article, click the submit link. Sometimes funny things will happen at this point. Various errors, but if you click again, it will go through.
 * 3) Immediately change the user name to the correct submitter, otherwise you will be the submitter.
 * 4) Either let it get reviewed normally or immediately review it yourself, which is what I have done if it has been in there for weeks or months. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 08:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I noticed this discussion, so I've started dealing with them too.  Chzz  ► 10:39, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, so, I've been looking through the cat. And I wrote some code to help me check them - ie, it displays the page contents to me, so I can assess it, and then - if appropriate - I can fairly quickly 'submit' it with the creator's user name, and let the user know what I did. Examples. ,.

There are some anomalies that really should not be submitted; for example, one user had written down his game cheat-codes on an AFC page - so I nommed that for MfD, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bloxorz cheats.

Another example oddity was, where a 'decline' was removed afterwards by the user who created the page - possibly trying to make it look like an article. And so that was tagged by the bot as AFC-without-submission. I didn't actually notice that when I was checking, so I submitted it and told the user  - but I don't think that does much harm.

I could go through the approx. 1000 pages, and check which should be submitted. Doing reasonable checks with few fuck-ups, I estimate it'll take me average 30 seconds per page, so that'd be about 8 hours of my time.

Alternatively, we might think it perspicacious to just submit 'em all, and reviewers could deal with anomalies.

So - question -

Should I A) spend my hours on this, or B) should I ask for approval for a bot-run to just submit 'em?

Note: In either case, I suggest we do not 'flood' AFC with them; we could e.g. try to add 50 per day but only if the backlog is under 100. Or something.

Let me know please, here - A or B.

(Meanwhile, unless anyone screams at me, I'll keep sticking a few through)  Chzz  ► 16:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * My plan was to work on them one at a time and approve or decline each rather than moving them into submissions, which has been way overloaded. I see now there in only 90 articles waiting for approval.  Some people have been very busy. :-)  I hope busy, and not sloppy.


 * Unfortunately, I have previous commitments for now and the next few weeks, so I can not be much help. My gut says to review them individually and not do a wholesale dump.  I have a feeling that zombies may start appearing all over the Wiki, from my recent experience with this category.  I don't have a complete picture of how submissions is supposed to work, or why all these articles have a 11 December date tag date.  It makes me fearful of bots running amuck.  There appears to be a leak in AfC somewhere.


 * I vote for A and also not overloading AfC. Old articles I found there were already approved or were not worth been approved.   I.e., the author did what ever needed to be done, so there does not seem to be a pressing need to get "AfC submissions with missing AfC template" emptied quickly. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 20:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Break

 * Err, soryy for breaking the proposal, but how about - as the original idea of that cat - again proposed at the IRC - go through the submission either reveret the changes by the user after a decline or do a a submit (and sadly a decline) them? I'm really unhappy with the AWB job Chzz did until I mentioned him (again in the IRC) that he didn't added a submitter we can inform! The submitter/IP/loggen in user is easily added by the API and a modifieed version of the AFC tool, I'm working on! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:38, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Mabdul, no offence intended but... it is very hard to understand what you are saying.

I used AWB and submitted some with no 'user' in the template - yes. I've now started submitting with the username.

@Dcshank I suppose I will just carry on then, by hand, and keep submitting a few; that's fine; I can review them too. We're only talking about 1000-ish; it's no big deal. I cleared the backlog and dealt with 500 in a few hours yesterday - I don't think I was sloppy, but I'm always open to criticism. One thing I do know though is...when AFC backlog is small, and users are answered in a timely way, they are much more likely to stick around; that empirical but I believe it. So even if reducing the backlog means the odd few mistakes, I think that is a price worth paying.  Chzz  ► 03:58, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree 100%, I feel better knowing something is happening, even if I don't like it, rather than being ignored. Many of the entries are no-brainers, but they are unfortunately manual no-brainers. I wish I could help more, but I have made work promises I can't keep, since I'm off to the east coast this Sat. for a 10 days. --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 06:17, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There's no big rush, and it's not a massive task. I've dealt with a few hundred over the past couple of days. I'll keep plodding through them.  Chzz  ► 11:40, 23 December 2011 (UTC)


 * So, trying again to reword my problem: Why do we/you Chzz, add a submission template to the drafts with AWB? Most pages I checked randomly were already deleted and any (mostly the submitter) removed the declined template. Why not check the history page and either undo the removal, and in the case that there was never a submission template(or not reviewed before removal) simply add one with the original page creator in the parameters - so that the user gets a notification? I know that this is a huge/workload task, but we have no deadline! <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 20:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * We could just tweak and submit, but the reviewer would have to take extra care to check for things that don't normally happen, like the article already existing. We have the list almost wiped out, so I think it's best to just plod along on it for another week or so. I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 03:14, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Article already exists
What should I do, when I attempt to create an article, but the name already exists as another person in another job? --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 18:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You should move the other article to Name (job), and move the one you review to Name (other job), then place hatnotes on both articles.
 * Example :
 * move the existing  to
 * then move  to
 * If there is more than two, then you should move the other article to Name (job), and create a disambiguation page.
 * Example :
 * move the existing  to
 * then move  to
 * then create a disambig page at  to link to ,  , and any others on which we have articles, e.g.  ,  , etc.
 * It would help if you'd link specifically to the article; because their may be exceptions to the above (e.g. we wouldn't move Bill Clinton to Bill Clinton (politician), but instead have a disambig page for all the other Bill Clintons at Bill Clinton (disambiguation)). Hope this helps, CharlieEchoTango  ( contact ) 02:20, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks. That was my plan.  Am I that transparent?  I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 15:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

low-risk template indefinitely semi-protected
indefinitely semi-protected Template:AFC submission/comments at the off-wiki request of an unnamed active AFC member (not very transparent IMHO), but nothing in the history of the template suggests a need to protect it. That the template is a "highly visible template" is also questionable, while it does have a lot of transclusion, it is unlikely to be found (you really have to know where to look) or to be the target of vandalism as it does not affect the main space and is a template seen only by a very specific crowd (newbies and reviewers). I note that the template was also protected last year and swiftly unprotected for apparent lack of consensus. I don't think we should preemptively protect (even semi) a template that is not that highly visible nor the victim of disruptive editing, e.g. the template is not high risk. I don't want to wheel-war, so I came here to ask for your thoughts on this. Regards, CharlieEchoTango  ( contact ) 02:10, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for asking me at my talk page about this... :-/
 * Mabdul asked me to semi-protect this on IRC, and it didn't seem terribly controversial to me. The template has over 30,000 transclusions, and while it may not be the easiest to find, any vandalism to that template would affect a lot pf pages being edited by users new to Wikipedia. I noticed the previous entries in the protection log, however the unprotection entry noted "I won't consider it wheel warring" if it was replaced, and it was over a year ago. The other thing to consider is that the only people who really have need to edit this template are reviewers, who will be autoconfirmed anyway, so it's not doing much harm. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 02:19, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * First, sorry about not contacting on your talk page (I'm not used to questioning decisions by others, asking directly instead of seeking community input didn't even cross my mind... sorry :/). That said, I was going to notify you of this thread, but I got caught up with the above question, and you had already replied here.
 * Indeed, there is not much harm done, and it's not a big deal from a practical standpoint, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent; why should we protect something that has never been an issue in the past, based solely on a relatively high number of transclusions, of which 97% are long gone into the abyss? Why protect /messages, and not Template:AFC submission/declined, for example? And then, why not all AFC related templates? I'm sorry if this a bit of an ideological thread more than a practical one, but I just don't see a need for preemptive protection here, and I would've liked to see a RFPP filed or at least some form of discussion before protecting something that doesn't obviously need it (should always be done, because it feels silly demanding unprotection after the fact). :-) CharlieEchoTango  ( contact ) 02:45, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It's ok. You do raise some good points, and if it is (again) decided that unprotection here is unnecessary, then I'm perfectly fine with anyone undoing it. OTOH, though, I have helped deal with some vandals who do deliberately seek out little-known-yet-commonly-used templates and attack them, because they know it'll take a while for the source to get tracked down. I've been in the IRC help channel enough to know that AFC submission writers get confused just finding sources; if weird text gets added that they didn't put there, their heads are likely to asplode. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 02:53, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. - To clarify, my general view on this is just that whenever any template gets over a certain number of transclusions (thinking tens of thousands), it really should be semi'd unless there's some pressing need for new editors to be able to edit it (which usually isn't the case). Templates can be complicated things, especially with parserfunctions and the like, and even an experienced user meaning well has the potential to break a lot of pages. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 02:56, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't really see the point of this, or the harm of it either. As far as I can tell the template has never been edited let alone vandalised by a non-autoconfirmed user. However, this isn't the first time I've seen an AFC-related decision made off-wiki that someone has then had to chase up and question on-wiki, and that does concern me. We don't all use, or want to use, IRC, and discussing things exclusively there makes it difficult to retrospectively trace decisions. It's not hard to leave a quick note here to make sure nobody objects to whatever you've cooked up on IRC. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 09:17, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * agree with CET and Joey; I hate it when things get protected unnecessarily, and hate it more when things are done "per IRC". And that's from me, who spends 20+ hours a day on the thing. But, I also agree that this specific case isn't worth the effort worrying about.  Chzz  ► 15:29, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Come'on: since this template is transcluded on over 30k pages, every change on that will cause that the server is clearing the actual cache. You might want to look also at the talkpage of MediaWiki:Bad image list and see that posting somewhere bad images is a common problem and is getting problematic if that happens on 30k pages! I understand that IRC decisions - especially controversial ones - should be avoided (and I don't like most of these processes), but this case is totally uncontroversial and unproblematic since everybody who really needs to change something there is autoconfirmed. @CET: the other project templates should (in my eyes) also get a protection (semi is enough - so we would be able to change it) <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 13:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree. The vast majority of IP's really have no business editing a template like this.  The request for protection could have been handled better.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#5a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> spill the beans 15:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Strongly disagree, per IPs are human too. In this specific case, it does not matter. In general, thinking that IP's have no business editing is an awful attitude, regardless of what they're editing.  Chzz  ► 15:54, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That came out wrong, stricken above. All I'm trying to say is that access to certain things on Wikipedia requires trust.  For instance, admin tools are not given out to IP's.  There is a wide spectrum of activities on Wikipedia which require more or less trust from the community.  IP's can edit articles, but can't create new ones.  Registered editors can create articles, but can't delete them.  Admins can delete articles, but can't check the IP address of the registered editor who created it.  And so on.


 * With that said, trust is built by reputation, and reputation is built by repetition and history. Since many (if not most) IP's don't always edit from the same IP address, it's practically impossible for them to build up any trust, because it's practically impossible for the community to look at their editing history as a whole.  Access to certain activities on Wikipedia cannot and should not be given to untrusted users.  In my opinion, editing moderately high-use templates is in that category.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#a00 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#5a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> confabulate 17:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That is simply untrue: We have created the semi-protedted templated and thus IP editors are still able to edit and the have - as an example - a tracking category for an IP editor starting with 77 with a reason... <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 00:30, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, it seems we have some inconsistency here, between some policy, and some current common-practice.

WP:PROT says, (A) Administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages which are subject to heavy and persistent vandalism or violations of content policy (such as biographies of living persons, neutral point of view). Semi-protection should not be used as a pre-emptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used solely to prevent editing by unregistered and newly registered users, nor to privilege registered users over unregistered users in content disputes.

However, it also says, (B) Highly visible templates which are used on an extremely large number of pages or substituted with great frequency are particularly vulnerable to vandalism, as vandalism to the template may introduce vandalism to hundreds of other pages. Therefore, they are frequently semi- or fully protected based on the degree of visibility, type of use, content, and other factors.

I've always thought that (A) is not negated by (B) - ie, there's no reason to indefinitely (semi-) protect pages unless they've already been vandalised a fair amount. But I do realise that that isn't what often happens in reality.

Snottywong, I do take your points regarding trust - and I agree to some extent; but I just don't believe that is current policy. Personally, I'd probably support requiring (auto)confirmed to create or edit any template namespace page. And who knows, maybe that could get support. But I do also strongly support the 'open editing' model, wherever it is practical to handle potential disruption. The template is behind-the-scenes pipework stuff; if it were vandalised, it'd likely be noticed/fixed within minutes. And there's a zillion (est.) similar templates. We could maybe argue for indef-semi of all of them, but I think that'd need changes to policy... unless I'm misinterpreting something.

As I said - this case - no big deal. But it's an interesting topic.  Chzz  ► 18:32, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Articles on academic journals
Hi, recently several articles on academic journals have been proposed at AFC and I have seen cases where both "reject creation" and "approved" decisions were diametrically opposed to what is usual at the WP:WikiProject Academic Journals. Although only an essay, WPJournals habitually uses WP:NJournals to determine whether a journal passes the notability bar. In recent weeks I have seen articles rejected that clearly pass this bar, and other articles created that don't pass this bar. The latter is more inconvenient than the former, as editors (especially newbies) may be surprised if an article that passed AFC is subsequently deleted (either by a PROD or an AfD). I realize that people here do a lot of work fighting against a backlog and handling articles on all kinds of topics, so I realize that it will be difficult to avoid this kind of situation, but I thought it might be helpful if I posted a note about this issue here anyway. With much appreciation for all the hard work of you people here, --Guillaume2303 (talk) 14:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC) Perhaps we could implement a system that list AFCs with relevant WikiProjects, e.g. "This AFC was listed on X WikiProject", and then a subpage of participating WikiProjects would list pending and recently accepted/declined AFCs that are relevant to them. Just throwing the idea there, because Guillaume makes a good point in that AFC reviewers deal with all kinds of topics they are not necessarily knowledgeable about, and Chzz makes a good reply in that the standard most reviewers hold is not limited to the CSD criteria, but also to ensure something would also pass AFD, and establishing notability is somewhat difficult to do when something is poorly sourced. Of course, the nature of AFC makes it inconsistent in the way it deals with submissions depending on which reviewer reviews. Implementing some kind of collaboration system with WikiProjects might fix some of that, and then other things, not the least of which the occasional backlog. Just my 2¢. CharlieEchoTango ( contact ) 00:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment (This was discussed a little on my own talk page, so I'm copying part of the response here from ): WP:NJournals is an essay, and the WP:WikiProject Academic Journals a project-specific guide. I can only go on policy (WP:V) and guidelines (WP:GNG). If you think differently, just move it to a live article. Personally, I think AFC's need to meet WP:GNG regardless of SNGs. What I mean is... I accept that if someone creates an article on e.g. a high school or geo place with inadequate references as a live article, then I cannot tag it as A7, and AfD would probably keep/fix it; that's fine, I understand that. However for AFC, if I accept it, I am putting something that is sub-standard onto Wikipedia, which I don't want to do. Sometimes - if I can - I'd try to fix it myself if that's possible, but I don't always have time. When an AFC is 'rejected' the idea is, it can be fixed and resubmitted; nobody particularly cares who does the fixing; plus, of course, any (auto-)confirmed user could just move it live themselves and tidy up the headings; that's absolutely fine too - and then it's subject to the same slings and arrows as any other live article.  Chzz  ► 15:23, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting idea. You mean something like we do with AfDs, I guess. I don't know how difficult that would be to set up, but it might be worth a try and might indeed draw some people from the projects to AFC (I know I would, at this point it is just too difficult to find the articles that I am competent about). --Guillaume2303 (talk) 06:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I proposed that idea to Ironhold's official account User:Okeyes (WMF) at a special page, after he said me (agan in the IRC) that he will try to support us more and poking developers and other WMF employees. (see the relevant ideas page at User:Okeyes (WMF)/AFC). Feel free to add/improve the ideas. Regards, <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 10:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It might be worth a try, I guess, but I'm quite skeptical. Sometimes, if I find an article which is rather specific, I do try to ask on projects - if it's technical, or if refs are in a language I do not speak, or whatever. It's worked very very rarely. As an example, yesterday I came across Matrix Chernoff bound and had trouble deciding if the specific term was OK, so I asked on the Maths Wikiproject . However, some hours later I decided to make it live . Informing projects wouldn't be easy - it takes some human effort to decide which is relevent; also a great many wikiprojects are very low activity; if a small project is all-but-inactive it can be best asking elsewhere. Sometimes, for lanuage-help, I just go directly to one of the experienced editors I know that speaks it. But 99% of the time, I think I can assess if an article is likely to be deleted or not, regardless of the topic area.  Chzz  ► 10:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Živa Kraus
This article appears to be a word for word translation from the French Wiki. I don't know how this is handled. I would have used the Italian version which has 3 times more material.

Happy Holidays to all you Wikipedians:-p --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 02:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed, word for word. Could be handled with translated page and/or translation/Ref; but the article needs referenc/b>]] (Talk Talk) 18:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You should move the other article to Name (job), and move the one you review to Name (other job), then place hatnotes on both articles.
 * Example :
 * move the existing es anyways. The itwiki seems sourced, so maybe some of them could be transferred here (I'll abstain, as I don't speak Italian). Happy holidays to you too, Dcshank! :-) CharlieEchoTango  ( contact ) 02:34, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If it were accepted (ie referenced), then the translation issue could be resolved by putting (with appropriate parameters) on the talk page of the live article. As far as the review process goes, it's nothing to really be concerned about - you could add a comment mentioning that it appears to be translated from the itwiki page. But, as itwiki content is released under the cc-by-sa licence, anyone can use it for any purpose - it just needs attribution. Thus, as an AFC, you can process it just as you would any other.  Chzz  ►  18:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I declined for lack of references, but added the 'Translated Template' and asked the author to add the French version to the template if they could, and add some references.  Hopefully they were not trying to fake a translation as their own and are put off, but I know that there is a need for translated articles.   Is there a procedure for translations? --I B d Shank (Talk Talk) 01:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Severe Backlog!
Houston, we have a problem! We are experiencing a high backlog right now, sometimes even severe. Any suggestions how to fix this? Hold off on submitting articles for review that were created but never reviewed for awhile until the backlog goes down?

Also, I've noticed that articles in alot of them have been declined but still have the template. Please remove them when declining. We should work on getting rid of the template on any articles that have already been declined.

Cheers, <font color="#FF0000">JDO G <font color="#0000FF">555 Talk 20:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If WP:ACTRIAL hadn't been rejected by  the WMF, there wouldn't  be this problem, the trial  would have now been almost  completed, and the results would have been clear. Why  there should be such  a sudden increase in  AfC creations over the last  few weeks/months is probably  not known and never will  be (it  may  be the result  of global outreach  programmes or general talk  about  Wikipedia in  the media), but  it's not  going  to  slow down any time yet. There are only  a few immediate remedies:
 * Get more people working  at  AfC but guard against  having  too  many  inexperienced users assessing  the submissions  (we have enough  problems of that  kind already  at  NPP)
 * Exert pressure on the WMF to re-prioritise their projects (the AFT, for example, is taking  too  much priority) and re-establish  the shelved development  of the new Article Creation Flow interface and NPP reform -  both  of which  are now very  urgent as it  is clear from statements by  the WMF that  their GEP people are not  going  to  slow down to  match  our current  volunteer clean-up resources.
 * Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Question: When we accept an article we effectively create a new page&mdash;via the 'move' button. Does the new article then get added to the list of unpatrolled pages at NPP? <font color="#00008B">Pol430 talk to me 11:47, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * As long as the person moving the article is not an admin and doesn't have the autopatrolled user right, then it should show up at Special:NewPages. <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#00a 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> confabulate 17:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting, so potentially the AfC process is adding to the workload of NPP if the reviewer is a non-admin and does not hold the autopatrolled flag. But page moves do not show up as 'pages created' in edit counts; so, regardless of how many perfectly good articles I create via AfC, I am unlikely to be granted the autopatrolled flag and those pages will still appear at Special:NewPages. <font color="#00008B">Pol430 talk to me 18:17, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * With all  due respect  for the people who  are working  hard at  AfC, I  don't  think  it's a bad thing  at  all  for AfC'd articles to  show at  special:new pages -  although  I  don't  work  at  AfC, I've seen sufficient  oddities to reinforce my  view that a double control  should be exercised. The downside is however, that  NPP itself desperately  understaffed and far too  many  patrollers are not  doing  a very  good job  of it. WP:Autopatrolled is not  a user right per se, so  there's nothing  really  to  be gained for a creator to  have it.  Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment was removed by AQ!
 * That is a bit incorrect. If we move an article (random example), then this tool will recognize that this author has created a new page and thus your "articles created" count will raise. (similar if a page is userfied and/or deleted) That means a user is able to get the autopatrolled flag - although this is a really rare case. Yes, I believe if a page is accepted, the page should get patrolled. Maybe we can create/add a bot, who is watching Articles for creation/recent and then marking the pages as patrolled. (I propose that page, since nearly all who doing AFC reviews will likely use the AFC helper script and thus adding there a page - preventing from users who are autoconfirmed but moving the pages on their own.) An alternative to the bot might be that we change the AFC helper tool script and add the patrolled part, but dunno if that is possible (I believe that I saw something in the API). <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 19:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

That's not quite where I was coming from. The point I was making (which Kudpung and Scottywong picked up on) is that potentially some articles that are already 'fit for entry'&mdash;because they have gone through a comprehensive review process at AfC&mdash;are ending up at the queue at NPP. I tend to agree with Kudpung that a double control measure is a good thing as the quality and competence of AfC reviewers does vary&mdash;and anyone can have a go. I was simply asking a technical question about the NPP interface. For the reasons I have highlighted concerning reviewing I don't think a bot or script fix is the answer. <font color="#00008B">Pol430 talk to me 17:26, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Right. Two reviews couldn't hurt, and typically when a new page patroller comes across a good article, it consumes only a few seconds of their time because it is abundantly clear that no further cleanup is immediately necessary.  Also, I misspoke slightly in an earlier statement:  All new pages (regardless of who created them) show up at Special:Newpages, but pages created by admins or autopatrollers will automatically show up without the yellow highlighting.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#00a -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> confess 17:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I just want to step out and say thank you for those who clear the backlogs. I used to have quite a bit of time and could help out, but I have other venues of backlogs keeping me busy right now. As an inactive member, I feel your pain and i've seen the numbers quite a few times at about 500 submissions. If I can help you guys with administrative tasks in anyway, feel free to stop by my talkpage or poke me on IRC, noting AFC in the section title and i'll get to it as fast as I can (or maybe one of my TP stalkers will help out). -- DQ  (t)   (e)  09:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I blew it
As a reviewer who seldom visits this Wikiproject, I recently okayed Terence Macartney-Filgate‎ for article space. I now see it's rife with close paraphrasing issues, something I obviously should have checked for and caught first. I'll make sure this is addressed promptly, either by the creator or myself. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:08, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Shawn, it's okay, we all make mistakes. You can move it back into the AFC space if you want, as there is no rule preventing you from doing this. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 06:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay'ed a new article then subsequently found there is one existing
I think I was trying to be too clever(!) by okaying an AfC Malayapuram Singaravelu Chettiar, but then subsequently finding a pre-existing article Singaravelu Chettiar about the same person. That's the result of not understanding the various forms of Indian names, I suppose. So what should I do now? The existing article seems inferior and less well sourced than the new article. I guess the *correct* thing to do was not to release the new article but, having done so, would it be more constructive to propose merger of the two? Sionk (talk) 17:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Having thought about this for a few minutes I expect the path of least resistance would be to return the new article promptly to the author's Userspace and suggest the author expands the existing article. The only problem with this option is I don't know how to move it back to the AfC list. Advice? Sionk (talk) 17:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have not really read either of these articles properly but at first glance I would suggest redirecting Singaravelu Chettiar to Malayapuram Singaravelu Chettiar. The latter is clearly the better article and the former has sufficiently little page history for anyone to get too upset about the page being blanked and redirected. <font color="#00008B">Pol430 talk to me 17:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks for the second opinion. I'm on the case, fingers and toes crossed! Sionk (talk) 18:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)