Wikipedia:WikiProject New page

Goals

  • To conduct research on newly created pages and new pages patrol.
  • Create a central place for all new page patrollers in wikipedia, where they can share their thoughts, experience and opinions

Scope

Members

If you are willing in conducting research on newly created pages and make new page patrolling more disciplined and strong, then feel free to add your name here

Open tasks

  • To conduct study on newly created pages (this include what type of articles are being created with what frequency)
  • Create a central place that lists all empirical studies related to new pages on wikipedia
  • To improve newly created pages

Facts on newly created pages

Nonsense pages

Some typical characteristics are found in case of creation of nonsense pages.

  • User:page (i.e. the creator of the page) and/or User_talk:page are red links
  • User has made only one or two edits
  • The article title may be valid, but the content is nonsense. For example, the article title may be "Terrorism in Northern Europe", but the content is "suibigjregbneife354fsdn".

Articles on bands and musicians

As nearly half of all article deleted under the speedy deletion system are about bands and musicians, it should be a priority for a newpage patroller to become familiar with the notability guidelines for musicians. However, there are clues of non-notability that a patroller should look for in borderline cases. Many of them are outlined in the essay No one cares about your garage band, but these are not make-or-break clues. If a band is recently formed, is qualified as "upcoming," does not have a record deal, or has one with a label that is a redlink, then chances are that the band will fail the notability guidelines. Often, articles that go on and on describing the band's style as a mix of such and such, or as being influenced by such and such popular band, tend to be written that way to hide a lack of notability. Be on the lookout for articles about bands that have separated a long time ago, as those may actually be more notable than what the article asserts.

Newly created stubs

Many editors and established users often serially create stubs without expanding them. In such cases, the user's contribution prove that he/she has created many new stubs. Often, stubs will be serially created by bots. Remember that good stubs are perfectly fine beginnings to an article, and that editing policy does not require articles to be fully formed.

Regular newpage patrollers sometimes find that they do not need to bother patrolling stubs created by bots or mass-creators, once their purpose becomes clear. The overall patrol work can become more efficient if the work of mass-creators is ignored by patrollers. Encouraging frequent article creators to apply for the autopatrolled userright can help reduce the workload needed for new page patrol; this is unnecessary for bot accounts and admins, since their pages are always auto-patrolled.

"I'll add content later"

Often users will add a statement along the lines of "I'll add stuff later". This becomes troublesome because most new page patrol members are not likely to "check up" on the article and see if it was expanded. This becomes a dilemma between assuming good faith and deleting the article for no content.

Sometimes, someone who creates a new page will hit "Save" by mistake when the article is not even a valid stub. Sometimes, they will do so intentionally, but then keep working on the article immediately. If there is a chance, any chance at all, that an article may be expanded in the short term into a valid stub or more, the best course of action for a newpage patroller is to tag it with {{underconstruction}} and then follow up on it some time later. From experience, pages so tagged usually do become valid stubs within minutes.

Signs to look for are:

  • Article titles that sound interesting, but the article itself is just a few words;
  • Incomplete sentences, even incomplete words;
  • Infoboxes with no text around them;
  • Infoboxes with improper syntax.

Copyright Violations

Often a user will paste content from another website into Wikipedia. While it may not be immediately obvious, here are some signs to look for.

Signs:

  • Little or no wiki markup
  • Unencyclopedic; Does not follow the format of good Wikipedia pages
  • Other features that make it look like the page was copied from somewhere else (e.g., many successive line breaks, incorrectly used *'s, indentations)
  • Spammy and ad-like

Handling newly created pages

When newly created pages meet speedy deletion criteria, they are tagged with {{db|reason}}, so that they can be deleted by an administrator. The most commonly used templates for speedy deletion are: {{db-empty}}, {{db-bio}}, {{db-repost}}, {{db-attack}}, {{db-music}}, {{db-spam}}, or {{db-nonsense}}. A more comprehensive list can be found at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion.

Pages about individuals, places, or things which do not merit an encyclopedia entry are tagged with {{prod|reason}}, or listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.

Articles are generally not listed on Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion if there's a chance they could be improved and made into a meaningful article. They are tagged for cleanup instead. Many times, users start an article as the briefest of stubs, and then expand it over the succeeding hours or days.

Do not list an article for deletion on grounds of notability or unverifiability unless you have done what deletion policy, the Guide to deletion and Wikipedia:Notability all say to do: Look for sources yourself, first. A nomination where the nominator has not looked for sources theirself first is a bad nomination. If you don't look for sources yourself, don't list the article for deletion. Ask for sources on the talk page, or use the {{notability}} or {{unreferenced}} templates, instead.

Before nominating an article for AfD, the history and the talk page of the article are checked. A new page is often a recreation of a previously deleted article. The talk page often contains a notice which indicates that the article has already survived an AfD.

Sometimes, a situation occurs where a newly created article is about a topic whose notability a newpage patroller on duty feels is unquestionable, but the article, as it exists, does not do justice to that notability. It could be an article about a person, place, business, etc., which the patroller happens to be familiar with. Of course, in such a situation, the patroller will not put a deletion tag on that article. Since the patroller does not have time to improve the article themself, as it would distract them from their patrol work, the best course of action in such a situation is to add the {{underconstruction}} tag to the article, in addition to any other appropriate cleanup tag.

Newly created pages which do not follow Manual of Style properly, are tagged with suitable maintenance tags.

Tools

Folllowing are some tools used by new page patrollers to deal with newly created pages.

  • Category:unreviewed new articles - collects new unreviewed articles created via the Article Wizard 2.0.
  • NPWatcher is a new-page monitoring tool. It is used for maintanance tagging also.
  • RC patrol script permits rapid tagging of new pages with the relevant criteria for speedy deletion. It also gives non-admins revert, filter, and popup tools while using the (default) monobook skin.
  • Twinkle is a user script used to tag articles for speedy deletion, quick reverting, warning, and reporting users to administrators. It is the mostly used tool to tag newly created articles for deletion.
  • WikiAlerter (beta) is a Windows program designed to aid users in tagging pages for deletion and patrolling new pages.


Userbox

Members of this project can use this userbox in their own userpage.

NPThis user is a participant in the
WikiProject New page.

To use this userbox, copy {{User WikiProject New page}} to your userpage.

Research questions

Research findings

(Put your research findings, findings when dealing with newly created pages, experience and finding after creating new articles here)

Misuse of CSD G1

I believe the reason that many people misuse the speedy template for non-sense is because they mentally skim past the last part of the reasoning. The part that I believe most patrollers miss is the "the text is unsalvageably incoherent" part, they only see the "This article or other page provides no meaningful content or history" section. The problem with "no meaningful content" is that it is all subjective. That's my view on it. Icestorm815 (talk) 19:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The line between G1 Patent Nonsense and G3 Vandalism is sometimes quite blurred. Although the official policy makes a clear distinction between the two, the fact both tags result in deletion on sight leads some patrollers, and even admins, to use them both almost interchangeably. This can be seen when browsing pages listed in Category:Nonsense pages for speedy deletion, which includes pages tagged as vandalism, and in the deletion logs of pages that were so tagged. --Blanchardb-Me•MyEars•MyMouth-timed 03:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trigger-happy patrolling

Sometimes, in the rush to clear a backlog in newpage patrolling, one might find himself tagging borderline pages too quickly, not giving editors enough time to expand their new articles into valid stubs. I admit I am guilty of that myself.

I have been told that I am too lenient when it comes to pages that do not assert notability, as I tag borderline cases with a cleanup tag (e.g. {{notability}} instead of a deletion tag (e.g. {{db-bio}}). The problem is that the threshold between what constitutes a deletion candidate and what does not varies from one person to another, and even from one admin to another. I remember a case where an admin wrote a friendly note to me telling me that I had wrongly tagged a page for speedy deletion, and the page in question had been speedied by another admin within seconds of that message being posted on my talk page. To this day, the page has not been recreated.

Some pages should be deleted within seconds of creation, no question about that. However, I found that the best way to deal with borderline cases is to tag them for cleanup (or even the {{underconstruction}} tag) then follow up on them after one's tour of duty is finished. Such pages can be found in the patroller's own contribution log, so they are easy to track. Alternately, the patroller can put them in his watchlist. Thirty minutes to an hour is plenty of time for an editor to expand an article so that one knows where it is going. If nothing has improved in that period, then a speedy deletion tag is appropriate. --Blanchardb-Me•MyEars•MyMouth-timed 15:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yesterday I slapped some maintenance tags on a page that had been created an hour ago. See User_talk:Derek_Andrews#Jim_Molan. We got it sorted out, and I am being more cautious now.Derek Andrews (talk) 22:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Better guidance

I came upon patrolling by way of the special pages link in the sidebar. I think it would be more helpful if Special:NewPages linked to Wikipedia:New pages patrol rather than Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages. Or maybe the two should be merged? Derek Andrews (talk) 23:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Too speedy?

Here is a discussion of an interesting case: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Preserve our locos! (May 2008). It is at least leading to some constructive guideline, see further down on that page. It seems to me that the root cause of many of these problems comes from the ability of new accounts to be able to create pages in the main name space. I think there should be some mechanism that prevents them from creating such a page until they have (a) made a certain number of edits on other pages and (b) been here for a certain number of days. Another option might be to force them to create pages in their user space, and get them approved before moving to the main space. -- Derek Andrews (talk) 10:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I'm about two years too late on this discussion, I feel that I need to add that this violates what the wiki stands for: the free addition of content by anyone, with assumptions of good faith. Restricting new users would be a violation of this ideology. Just throwing that out there.Neo(T) 23:02, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvios

I added a section above on copyvios. LetsdrinkTea 00:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See also


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