Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC 2013

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Currently, AfC exists as "informal" and "not required", but there's no specific policy and/or guideline for responding to new users wishing to create articles. Some people choose to respond by only telling them how to use AfC without telling them about mainspace (if registered), where others tell them how to create it in mainspace, and others are in between. The solutions I see are:

1. Require new users to use Articles for Creation for new articles, to the point of a policy change that would make it against policy to create new articles directly for new users.
2. Strongly suggest, to the point of the Article Wizard going straight to AfC and potentially other methods, that new users use Articles for Creation for new articles.
3. Recommend, but do not make it the only option, that new users use AfC to create new articles.
4. Remain indifferent, presenting both options and not suggesting one method or the other.
5. Recommend mainspace for creation of new articles by new users, with an {{unreviewed}} similar template.
6. Strongly suggest, to the point of making it the only option in the Wizard and potentially other methods, that new editors create articles in mainspace (with a similar stipulation as above).
7. Require, to the point of a policy change, that new users create in mainspace and mark as unreviewed by default.

As currently, it looks like the current status quo (before an earlier change I made to WP:WIZGO) is "Strongly suggest, to the point of the Article Wizard going straight to AfC, that new users use Articles for Creation for new articles", but not outright requiring it through penalty of deletion and/or warning. I'd appreciate the community's view on what should be done with this.

Assuming a "Require" or "strongly suggest" gains consensus, most likely "new editor" will need to be defined somehow; comments on this are also welcome below.

Thanks for your input ~Charmlet ^-talk- 02:33, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Additional proposal 1 - Additional proposal 2

Option 1 (Require AfC)

"Require new users to use Articles for Creation for new articles, to the point of a policy change that would make it against policy to create new articles directly for new users."

Support

1. Strong, strong support The entire point of AfC is to have a peer review process for (sometimes) low-quality articles by new contributors. If AfC is kept informal, it's not fulfilling its purpose. I normally support the WMF and its decisions, but I can't see the reasoning behind its refusal to mandate the AfC process. It's a debacle. theonesean 04:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
2. Support. In my opinion, this is a better approach than #7, and half-measures buys us the worst of both worlds. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:28, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

   Striking support based on the arguments made below. I now have exactly no idea what the correct course of action is. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:56, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

3. Support. As a new page patroller I sometimes admit to being unintentionally WP:BITEY to the newbies who create poorly sourced articles, by speedy tagging for CSD A7. (I also commonly end up tagging for A1 and G11). Some of them are very offended because no one told them what to do, and they're being punished for it. Many new articles created by newbies end up being CSD'd anyway, (I've noticed lots of new editors asking "why did you delete my article? it was good!" etc.) and this would prevent large amounts of articles flooding into mainspace only to be deleted later. Also, at least if someone goes to AfC, then people will teach them how to and how not to write articles, instead of being deleted and having to start over, and not really learning anything so that they write better articles. Someone in the other section proposed userspace drafts, but I think a lot of new editors fail to realize how much of an important option that can be. In addition, while the article wizard is helpful, I see a number of new editors also leaving in the "subject of my article" is... in the section. If we don't require them to use AfC, at least require them to use article wizard - it automatically tags with new, unreviewed article and will help maintain a bit of coherency. For the purposes of this support, a new user is defined as a non-autoconfirmed user: at least get some editing done so you're familiar with Wikipedia, and new page advertisers are deterred. If they're so eager to create a new article, they can use AfC. There's my long two cents, kikichugirl ^inquire 07:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Strong oppose. Almost every person I've spoken to on Wikipedia presently started out by creating a new article themselves. For many, their article was subsequently deleted because it was rubbish. For example, I never would've been active on Wikipedia had this proposal been enacted before I joined, as I joined Wikipedia by creating a trash article. This openness is exactly how we attract new editors. If we further restrict this, we're kind of shooting ourselves in the foot with any serious and credible effort to tackle editor retention. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 15:29, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
2. Oppose. With the exception of a change in policy, this mirrors the status quo and I don't believe it will achieve anything except create another layer of bureaucracy to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. It will waste editor and admin time trying to police the inevitable policy breaches. Pol430 talk to me 18:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
3. Strong oppose. I haven't been overly active in awhile, but I was a pretty active new-page patroller some ways back. My experience leads me to echo the same concerns of the two above. Jd027 (talk) 19:14, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
4. No. Too bitey, and also would be messy for secondary accounts etc. Stifle (talk) 14:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
5. Oppose We already put to many hurdles in front of new editors. This is antithetical to the ethos of Wikipedia. I teach people to edit Wikipedia. I teach them to do it well. I see no reason why my students should be forced through this unnecessary process. the "secondary account" point above is also well made. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:29, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
6. Oppose per WP:CREEP. Warden (talk) 13:51, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
7. Oppose AfC reviews are too unreliable. When they aren't accepting junk, they're turning something down because of minor faults. As most people turned down never return, we'd lose too many article. If we ever have an afc process that finds some way to limit comments to the people who would actually know enough to be help and care enough to give specific advice, it might be different. The comments about secondary accounts and other people who might as well work directly in mainspace are also relevant.. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 18:54, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
8. Strong oppose - I've never used AfC, for the simple reason that I don't trust it. Almost everything I write is in userspace, and then moved into mainspace when it is ready, bar for a few tweaks. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 12:29, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

   To be fair, AfC is targeted at new and inexperienced users, so you're not really the target audience for AfC. I share your lack of trust in it, though. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 13:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

   I know I'm not the intended target audience for AfC - but I wrote my first ever articles directly into mainspace, before I knew I could move them, and this is back when I only had a few hundred edits. :) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 13:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

   Ah, I thought you meant that you don't use it now. My mistake. Thanks for the clarification. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 15:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

   Not a problem, glad that this is sorted out :) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 15:41, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

9. Oppose I think forcing AfC on them is much worse than sending newbies off into mainspace editting. Jane (talk) 20:14, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
10. Strong oppose. A brilliant way to discourage valuable new editors. I have rescued far too many articles on notable subjects from repeated rejection at AfC by reviewers who had no knowledge of the subject or the types of appropriate sources in that area and no willingness to find other editors who did; who had practically zero experience of article creation themselves; who had no knowledge of individual notability criteria; and in many cases no detailed knowledge of the AfC guidelines. Voceditenore (talk) 09:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
11. Oppose per DGG. Begoon ^talk 05:03, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
12. Strong Oppose per DGG, Jane023, and Voceditenore. SBaker43 (talk) 20:07, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
13. Oppose per DGG and Voceditenore. I too lack faith in AfC, and considering the possibility of secondary accounts is important. CtP (t • c) 19:27, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
14. Oppose; DGG and Voceditenore have put the points well. We have a number of mechanisms designed to catch inappropriate new articles created in mainspace, we have a malfunctioning AfC process, and we shouldn't assume new editors are incompetent, not the least because they may not be functionally new. (Many people edit for some time as IPs first; others create new identities for whatever reason.) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
15. Oppose per DGG, Voceditenore et al. Johnbod (talk) 22:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
16. I wouldn't encourage anyone to use AFC, the place for article improvement is mainspace. ϢereSpielChequers 22:49, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
17. Oppose - while AfC might be a decent solution, mandating it for new users might scare too many of them away. APerson (talk!) 18:06, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
18. Oppose per Voce. – SJ + 21:31, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• This seems to be just a rehash of WP:ACTRIAL. I don't think this is an idea even worth discussing... Michaelzeng7 (talk) 00:16, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I didn't want to seem biased by including the other extreme. I understand this will probably be snowed after 10 comments. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 00:25, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
• Note that, pending being told otherwise by someone from the WMF, a policy change (i.e. not a technical removal of ability) would be perfectly within the consensus formed by editors. i.e. if consensus stands with this proposal, it can't be implemented technically (by removing createpage), but could be implemented by one or more of: a new A## WP:CSD for articles not going through AfC, removing all references to mainspace creation from WP:YFA WP:WIZARD and other pages, among other things. Those details could be worked out in a subsection if/when/after this gains consensus. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 02:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
  • An adminbot would be a technically more elegant way to do this for the most part.Tazerdadog (talk) 06:09, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Charmlet is right. The technical proposal of ACTRIAL ran into opposition among the developers (who are not all WMF staff, but are another group of users that has to agree to implementing technical changes). Any policy decision can be made among the editors of a wiki, unless a global policy is put in place. Currently there is no such policy about new page creation, and different wikis take different approaches. – SJ + 21:31, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
      • With respect to Sj, if the submission truly merits one of the speedy deletion criteria (Attack/Hoax/Copyright Infringement) the effort must be deleted without any regard to the newbie's efforts. Beyond that there's the CSD:G13 rationalle which says that if a AfC page has laid unedited for 180 days it can be nominated for "expedient" deletion as an abandoned draft. If the article gets deleted via G13 there's an option for requesting the file back per WP:REFUND/G13. Hasteur (talk) 16:36, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

      While I voted against this proposal, I think we need a different conceptual space - say a default category with its own CSS and effective policies - to allow newbies' pages to be created + edited + reviewed in a different environment. Like the way WikiHow disallows any newbie's work to be deleted for a few days, to leave time for them to be welcomed. But aside from WikiHow - the only large wiki I know that has grown consistently and significantly since the worldwide activity dropoff in 2007 - most wikis don't handle this issue with nuance. – SJ +

• This is so similar to the trial that was accepted by a healthy community consensus at WP:ACTRIAL and summarily rejected by the Foundation, that it would almost certainly not fly. Apparently, the Foundation can, and will exercise control over what the individual Wikipedia communities want, especially where they hold the keys to the servers, and while they are not helping very much to find solutions, the WMF will be quick to intervene if they see things developing that do not conform to the personal opinions and policies of senior members of the staff or the Foundation's global initiatives, e.g., increasing the statistical number of 'article' creations. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:08, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
  • The Foundation, for once, was right. People come to create articles. See my comments at the time, which I still endorse today. Things are different from 2 years ago; the threat to us was losing editors, and it was not yet realized that this inevitable for an organization which was becoming part of the Establishment--the excitement of participating could not but decrease. Now, the treat to the encyclopedia is promotionalism, and what we need in order to deal with it is greater competence, which much as we may hate to admit it, in practice amounts to some degree of professionalism. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Option 2 (Strongly suggest AfC)

"Strongly suggest, to the point of the Article Wizard going straight to AfC, that new users use Articles for Creation for new articles."

Support

1. Support "New user" is a bit too nebulous, and the idea of requiring someone to use the AFC process seems extreme. Still, despite the proposer's apparent bias, I consider it to be a good thing that articles are rejected for not having inline citations and similar infractions. Our tolerance of these things is due to the necessity of grandfathering in old content, and need not extend to new articles.—Kww(talk) 21:18, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
2. Support I don't think AfC should be required, but making it the only well-advertised process will ensure that those who need AfC the most will get it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

Ditto. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

1. As above. AfC reviews are too unreliable even for this. I would advise anyone with a usable article subject and even a mediocre ability at writing, to go directly to mainspace, unless they had strong COI, as with a paid editor. . 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 19:09, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

   - although the standard of reviewing at NPP where new mainspace creations come under scrutiny is ofttimes not much better than at AfC. Not to mention that the low hanging fruit at NPP gets picked first while the more contentious or difficult ones tend to end up in the 16,000+ backlog. The solution IMHO, is to lay down a set of minimum qualifications for reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:41, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

   -Quite right. The structure is much less relevant. Whatever structure we have, there will still be incompetence and deliberate attempts to make promotional or other abusive use of WP. DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

2. Oppose Jane (talk) 20:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
3. Oppose per my comment under Option 1. I explicitly advise many new editors not to use AfC. Voceditenore (talk) 09:35, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
4. Oppose per my comment in answer to DGG above. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:57, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
5. Oppose per DGG and Kudpung. Qualifications for reviewers would be a must before I could consider supporting this. Begoon ^talk 05:03, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
6. Oppose per DGG and Kudpung. As it is, the reviews are very unreliable. Johnbod (talk) 22:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
7. There are plenty of incorrect deletion tags at special new pages, but they shouldn't get deleted unless they meet the speedy deletion criteria, the BLPprod criteria, are uncontentious prods or are considered at AFD. But at AFC anyone can decline a submission, even because in their sole judgement it would be deleted by AFD. So we should be scrapping or reforming AFC not encouraging people to use it. ϢereSpielChequers 22:57, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

@Kww: I don't remember saying anything about those rejections being bad. Maybe you confused me with someone else? I agree with everything you said, not the other way around :-) ~Charmlet ^-talk- 00:35, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

You must not be the author of #Additional proposal : Make AfC reviewing a requestable permission, then.—Kww(talk) 00:55, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Nope. The only things I authored were the wording at the top, the list of 7, and the discussion signed by me. The proposal at the bottom was added by User:Ritchie333. If you or anyone else has further proposals to add, feel free to do so :) ~Charmlet ^-talk- 01:22, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• I don't know whether I support this particular suggestion or not. I'm still smarting from the way in which WP:ACTRIAL was rejected by the WMF (whether they were right to do so or not). I have interpreted from their comments that anything that would prevent registered users from creating directly in mainspace would not be tolerated. As I've said many times already, if the quality of reviewing could be radically cleaned up, both at AfC and NPP, perhaps a lot of the problems could be solved (that was why we originally proposed ACTRIAL). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Option 3 (Suggest AfC)

"Recommend, but do not make it the only option, that new users use AfC to create new articles."

Support

1. Support. AfC is a good procedure, but it shouldn't be the only option for new editors, and new editors should be made aware that this is not mandatory by policy. Telling them the benefits of using AfC instead of direct creation at article space is a good thing, though. Diego (talk) 11:09, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
2. I could go for this. Stifle (talk) 14:28, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
3. Support. APerson (talk!) 03:30, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Not even this. I would suggest it only for those people with COI or who lack confidence, or have problems in writing directly, I'd advise anyone else to stay clear of it, and go directly to the Teahouse for assistance if they need it. If anyone who supports using afc wants to strengthen the case for it, the first step is to increase the quality of the reviews, and the second, improve the mechanics of the process. So far, I see no signs of either. The most difficult problem with new editors, beyond that of giving them proper advice, is to persuade them to actually return to fix the problems, and neither NPP nor afc are any good at that. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

   - as I said in another couple of sub sections above, if the quality of reviewing at both AfC and NPP could be radically cleaned up by imposing minima for reviewers' experience, a lot of these issues could probably be solved. The most difficult problem with new editors is that many of them want to be reviewers themselves. I've unearthed some hair-raising problems at AfC over the last few days, and one of my suggestions has been to tone down the aggressive campaigns for backlog drives and recruiting new reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:02, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

   who in their right mind would want to review at AfC in its present state, with a set of procedures too difficult for humans to follow? The programmers there are incapable of even modifying the notice telling someone to see the article for the reasons, when the article is given a tag for speedy deletion and won't be there. (I manage there because I simply ignore the parts that don't work: --I have learned to never use their prebuilt reasons, I have begun to simply remove or revert irrelevant comments and bad reviews. I give people instructions on their own talk pages, changing the automatic templates to say what needs saying and omit the irrelevant portion. I move things however works best to make a feasible article or merge or redirect.) DGG ( talk ) 05:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

2. Oppose even this. See my comments under Options 1 and 2. Voceditenore (talk) 09:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
3. Oppose , but only because AfC is currently a process that just can't be trusted. Obviously a great many of the submissions are never going to make it to mainspace, but experience is needed to judge article that have more substance and credibility. Until that happens - and frankly, some reviewers are even getting the low-hanging fruit wrong - AfC is not a reliable place for new users to go. Problem is, where else can they go - is NPP more reliable? (rhetorical question). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
4. Oppose until the process is sound and reliable. Begoon ^talk 05:03, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
5. Oppose per DGG, Kudpung & others, while things are as they are. Johnbod (talk) 22:26, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
6. Per DGG and Kudpung. ϢereSpielChequers 22:59, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Option 4 (Either way)

"Remain indifferent, presenting both options and not suggesting one method or the other."

Support

1. Support. This is best. We shouldn't nannyishly try to push people into running the AfC gauntlet - the social aspects of it (submitting to review and responding to critique), or the technical ones (at #wp-en-help, many queries are from people who have mucked up the submission template or think they may have) are daunting to some; on the other hand others love the handholding aspect of a wizard and a review. Who are we to know; we don't even know whether the person is truly new (there are in fact non-new editors who continue to use AfC because they like it) let alone what suits their style best (I copied a similar article into Word in edit mode to serve as a template for my first article). We have ways to check the new article in both cases (NPP for the mainspace ones) and all sorts of help pages including IRC and the Teahouse. Leave people to work and learn in their own way. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:13, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose there are great differences between the options, & it is unfair & unhelpful to newbies not to try to explain them. What do you recommend to newbies? I know I recommend mainspace. Johnbod (talk) 22:28, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
2. I could accept AFC if we found some way to identify the IPs of PR agencies and used this to channel their offerings away from mainspace. But I would actively discourage any legit editor from using AFC. ϢereSpielChequers 23:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
3. Oppose Security through obscurity. As long as users have the technical ability to choose, they should be fairly informed of all their options and the relative merits of each. Kilopi (talk) 02:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

   are you seriously proposing to tell new usera "all their options & the relative merits of each" before they start writing articles--it's almost impossible to get most of them to actually read the most basic rules. Of course, we might do better at that if we didn't use boilerplate. We want them to write any way they care to, and then it can be improved. The hard part is getting people to write at all. DGG ( talk ) 05:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Hmm, this option is food for thought. In the article wizard, we could present two options to editors. One button will directly publish to mainspace, while the other button submits it to the AfC namespace to "await review from a more experienced editor". Michaelzeng7 (talk) 21:35, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

a very good idea, once we have identified these editors, and limited the reviewing to them. at present, AfC guarantees nothing of the sort. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Option 5 (Suggest mainspace)

"Recommend mainspace for creation of new articles by new users, with an {{unreviewed}} similar template."

Support

1. Support - There have been many recent statements to the effect that AFC is broken. Part of the problem appears to be AFC reviewers who are themselves relatively new editors, and who reject drafts based on misunderstanding of policy. I don't see any movement to rework AFC, and so any change to make it more important will just discourage new editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

   I do have to raise an eyebrow in regards to the above statement. Any article placed directly in the main article space is immediately subject to a combination of deletion rationales and templates (CSD, AFD, PROD and its counterpart BLPPROD). These deletion tags are often placed within a few moments after the article is created, and i have seen more then a few placed by editors who quite frankly didn't have a clue as far as deletion rationales go.

   AFC is not perfect by any stretch of the word, but at the very least it provides (new) users some leeway by giving them a safe space to work on their draft, along with feedback on how to proceed. At the same rate there will always be a difference between reviewers in terms of review quantity regardless of whether they are performing AFC reviews or newpage patrol. Reviewing can be a complex trade to learn though and I have committed my own share of mistakes when i just started out. Even so, it might be a good idea to include some form of new reviewer patrol. The AFC backlog drives specifically ask reviewers to review other reviewers reviews. It should be technically possible to generate a list of reviews made by new editors and not previously seen AFC reviewers. That list could be checked and editors could be given a nudge if they seem to make (to many) mistakes. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 07:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

2. Support except for those very unconfident or with potential COI. With fewer articles coming in, Afc might well work much better. Johnbod (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
3. Support per Johnbod ϢereSpielChequers 05:58, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

1. The new editor can, and probably will, just remove the ungainly template from their shiny new article, thus removing the page from the unreviewed category and the process falls apart. Pol430 talk to me 19:26, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

   Removal of CSD templates by authors is a longstanding issue, and there are several solutions in place, albeit not quite 100% effective. Ideally I'd like to change the flow at newpages so that articles tagged for deletion are not marked as patrolled. That way they could be left as NoIndex, and removing a CSD template would simply return them to being an unpatrolled new article. But the current process is very far from falling apart over this old issue. ϢereSpielChequers 05:58, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

2. Strong oppose per Chequers.Oppose per Pol430. APerson (talk!) 18:02, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

   Strong oppose per someone who is supporting per someone else? I find this confusing, you might want to clarify what exactly I've said that your opposing over. Is it possible you are responding to something I said in another thread? ϢereSpielChequers 22:52, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

   I guess I scanned to the end of the preceding comment and typed in whatever appeared there. Whoops. APerson (talk!) 03:29, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Option 6 (Strongly suggest mainspace)

"Strongly suggest, to the point of making it the only option in the Wizard and potentially other methods, that new registered editors create articles in mainspace (with a similar stipulation as above)."

Support

1. Support. I think this option has been under-rated thus far. "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." I personally think a more vibrant content-editing community will result from increased interaction with the mainspace on the part of new users, with the happy consequence that perhaps we will see a reduction in the backlog at WP:AfC. I support Option 6, not 7, on the grounds that an absolute mandate would probably divert attention to enforcement of that mandate and away from more worthwhile endeavors. Jd027 (talk) 19:22, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
2. Comment - Have added the word "registered" to this option. It should be fairly easy to steer registered editors to mainspace and unregistered ones to AFC. ϢereSpielChequers 06:05, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Procedural oppose. Would break the process for IP editors who are initially encouraged by the existence of the Article Wizard, only to find it's a dead-end that asks them to perform a function they cannot technically perform. Pol430 talk to me 19:31, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

   I've boldly added the word "registered" to the option. Does that resolve your concern? It would leave the status quo that you have to register an account to start a new article in Mainspace, and leave AFC as an option for those who don't want to create accounts. ϢereSpielChequers 06:05, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

2. Oppose since AfC can be fixed. (Maybe.) APerson (talk!) 18:04, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Option 7 (Require mainspace)

"Require, to the point of a policy change, that new users create in mainspace and mark as unreviewed by default."

Support

1. Support with sadness, as the community seems unwilling to effectively address the problem of declined drafts. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:11, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

   Comment As Pol430 notes, this also requires opening up mainspace creation to new IP editors. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:41, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Not feasible The term 'new users' presumably encompasses new IP users who are technically unable to create main space pages and the reason AfC exists. Pol430 talk to me 19:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

   We'd obviously have to change that. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:40, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

2. Not really Much as I dislike afc, it is needed for people with COI, and should be an option. I wouldn't recommend it in other cases until it improves, but it has the potential for improvement. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 19:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
3. Strongly oppose. Although the restrictions suggested in WP:ACTRIAL were met with a healthy consensus after a well subscribed RfC, it was disallowed by the Foundation. I'm not arguing here whether or not the WMF or those who opposed the scheme were right or wrong, but in the aftermath of this and the continuing absence of a proper landing page for new users, be they registered or IPs, and from my experience from patrolling new pages (and the quality of the patrolling), and my recent investigations of AfC, opening the creation of new pages in mainspace even further, would spell disaster. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:58, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
4. Oppose. No reason to remove the AfC option, and plenty of reasons it should be available; what AfC needs is reform. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:03, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
5. Whilst sandboxes are not my preferred way to create articles they are a valid option, and I would at least leave registered editors with the choice between sandboxes and mainspace. IPs can be left with AFC, and perhaps we could develop a way to identify spammers and confine them to AFC? For example if admins could set a user status of "AFC only" and set that flag on for creators of overly promotional content? ϢereSpielChequers 06:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
6. Oppose - not feasible, and AfC seems to be a decent solution to the new IP issue. APerson (talk!) 17:53, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Well, here's the other extreme. If there comes a consensus to this point, we would effectively be marking the AfC process as historical. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 00:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Correct. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:11, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
• Opening up mainspace creation to IPs would require the intervention of the Wikimedia Foundation, and after the Wikipedia biography controversy, that's just not going to happen. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 23:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I doubt the WMF would oppose allowing IPs to create articles, and certainly not for BLP concerns. All new articles get looked at, and we are very efficient at deleting the attack pages, not least because we have a system that lets people know what the unpatrolled ones are. Our big risk for a future BLP scandal is that the English language Wikipedia doesn't have flagged revisions for mainspace, so we don't know which IP and newbie edits have been looked at, which means that a proportion pass through recent changes without any human check. ϢereSpielChequers 06:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Defining "new user" for the purposes of this guideline

• My personal opinion is that a "new user" should be defined as someone inbetween non-autoconfirmed and one article creation - i.e., someone who isn't autoconfirmed would always be a "new user"; someone who is autoconfirmed is not automatically a "non-new" user; someone who is autoconfirmed and knows their way around policies wouldn't be a "new user"; and someone who hasn't ever created an article and is barely autoconfirmed (<50 edits for sure, probably higher) is a "new user". Thoughts? ~Charmlet ^-talk- 00:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Other discussion

• This RFC seems to have missed that there is a third option: userspace drafts. This is a way for any user to work on an article and get to know the rules without subjecting to any form of immediate review, provided it is not blatant spam or a copyright violation. This option is explicitly mentioned in various templates that new users may be exposed to. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:19, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
  • My mistake, although wouldn't that be lumped in with AfC to an extent? If you wish to add them please do, or I can tomorrow, it was an oversight on my part to not add in specific options for userspace draft. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 03:27, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Because, in all truth, AfC doesn't mean "here you go it's submitted", it can be used for draft articles too. That's the big gray box at the top of some submissions, and it's not submitted. So, for this purpose, I'd consider userspace drafts falling under AfC. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 03:29, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
    • The issue with userspace drafts is that IP editors can't, as I understand it, create them. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:42, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
      • They can, in theory, create them as talkpages, such as is the workaround AfC uses. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 05:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
        • Yep., or WT: to be precise. Which will work for IPs.. does work for them, until the WMF forces the use of Flow on that namespace, as they have indicated they intend to do. --j⚛e decker^talk 05:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
• Not really, this is even less controllable than afc. We could presumably develop tools to find them, but I don;t see as how it would be an improvement. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 19:39, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• And we get yet another duplicate of our good friend WP:ACTRIAL. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 05:18, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
  • As I've said, this isn't meant to be "disallow new users from page creation" at all. It's meant to have the community input into what side of the spectrum it wants between two (really almost three as Beeblebrox points out above) methods of new users creating articles, each with it's own pros. The only option out of the 7 that would end in an ACTRIAL similar ending would be option 1 (requiring new users to use AfC). And that one is highly unlikely to get much support in my humble-before-anyone-actually-comments opinion. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 13:51, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
• I wouldn't advise anyone to use AfC, because there is a good chance that it will be reviewed by someone totally ignorant of what topics belong in an encyclopedia and how an article should be written. Unless we have some process to only allow people who have demonstrated that they know what they are doing to review articles then the process is next to useless. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:34, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
• There are other options not mentioned. Some would require technical changes. For example: If a page has been in "mainspace" less than 14 days and either 1) the page had not been "reviewed" by someone with "reviewer" privileges or 2) the page was tagged for deletion, the page would be marked "noindex," displayed with a "new, un-reviewed article" template/banner, and put in a maintenance-category "new articles requesting immediate review" and/or "new pages tagged for possible deletion." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:45, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Please feel free to add that as an option. That could be as simple as adding some things to {{unreviewed}} or similar. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 00:04, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
    • That might at least allow aging drafts to be more effectively subject to CSD A-criteria, PROD, and BLPPROD. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

• AfC's use of noindex, as well as its use above, isn't enough. Nearly every copyright violation, BLP attack, and promotional article we leave sitting festering in "Declined AfC drafts" is noindexed *but* indexed at any number of Wikimirrors, most often http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/ . As much as I'm fond of, and have done some work at AfC, the inability of Wikipedians to craft a workable response to the publishing of copyrights, attacks, and ads via ages-old declined AfC submissions leaves me wondering if it would be better to chuck the process entirely. (It's my opinion that G13 isn't working, something I can expand on if people wish.) Before I give an opinion on this RfC, does anyone have a constructive suggestion for how to deal with this negative side-effect of AfC? --j⚛e decker^talk 21:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Make the G13 not some ridiculous amount of time? My opinion is that it should be 2 weeks after a decline and no editing, or 4 weeks of no editing altogether (before submission) and it's deleted. Warn author a week before, and a day before deletion if possible. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 00:04, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Changing G13 like this would be very bitey for occasional users that edit on weekends/holidays/vacations etc. 64.40.54.29 (talk) 01:06, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

The G13 time frame isn't the issue, I agree that dropping the time limit much below 6 months would come with some unacceptable costs.

The problem is that someone has to manually evaluate 50,000-100,000 drafts, on top of the additional AfC review, and on top of the review done by the deleting administrator. Nobody is willing to do enough of this to make the whole process work, that is, even make progress at whittling down that pile. So the pile continues to fester and grow. THAT is the problem. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment I'd just like to point out that we cannot control what wiki mirrors have on their sites. Also, BLP violations, copyvios, etc. can be in any namespace (i.e. user, talk, template, etc.). So AfC space is not something different from any other namespace that isn't frequented too often. We have many tools at our disposal to check for these problems and they work equally well in AfC and all our namespaces. Cheers. 64.40.54.29 (talk) 01:00, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I strongly disagree. The density of copyright violations and other speediable problems is much, much higher in the declined AfC pile than in any other area of the encyclopedia. I encourage you to, as I did, use Catscan or one of it's variants to work up a list of the few hundred oldest "declined as promotional" AfC drafts, and to sort through them, appling G3, G10, G11, G12 and/or G13 as appropriate. When you've done that, come back and we can have a discussion. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:07, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • PS: do you edit under another name? --j⚛e decker^talk 18:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Yup. ;) 64.40.54.109 (talk) 05:02, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

:-) Cool, thanks--I'll try and skip the "overexplaining" part then.  :) --j⚛e decker^talk 15:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you 64.40.54.134 (talk) 01:54, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• Additionally, Option 7 will never get past the WMF after the Wikipedia biography controversy. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 01:08, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Unless I'm wrong, that was a Jimbo Order™ to the developers, not a WMF decision. The likelihood of it actually being accepted, and then the WMF accepting it is still next to none. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 02:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
• Procedural note. Considering the options presented here are a spectrum, is it actually useful to have 7 predefined sections? Suggest we do away with those and try and form consensus through discussion. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 16:22, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, I guess people could be in between the predefined sections, but assuming something other than status quo gains enormous consensus then the details of details, implementation, policy changes, etc. can be hashed out later. It's like the first of the PC RfCes earlier (1 - gauge consensus overall, 2 - policies and implementation, 3 - more of the same). ~Charmlet ^-talk- 02:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Additional proposal : Make AfC reviewing a requestable permission

I'm not sure if this belongs in a separate RFC, or whether I can bolt it onto this one, but on recent discussions on WT:WER#AFC, I expressed concern that some new and inexperienced AfC reviewers lack the required judgement on reviewing submissions, and decline articles for spurious and irrelevant reasons such as no inline cites or bad formatting, plus we have evidence of tag team spammers bulk approving articles with no evidence of notability that subsequently cause extra work at CSD / AfD. With this in mind, I would like to propose an "AfC reviewer" permission that is requested at WP:RPE. The permission would be granted to those who have shown understanding of our notability and verifiability policies, and would be similar to autopatrolled. I appreciate there are technical issues with implementing this, which could be solved by slightly modifying the permission to allow moves from project talk space to article space, or (even better) creating a completely separate AFC namespace.

• Support as proposer. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
• Question - Can this be the same parameter that PC uses? It could also be a whitelist system for WP:AFCH. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:28, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why not (and hopefully that will also address Tazerdadog's concerns too) - I just picked autopatrolled as the closest permission I can think of, but since PC uses a permission called "reviewer", that makes even more sense. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:25, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• Weak Support. It's an idea, but I would prefer this permission be significantly looser than you have described here. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support-ish I was pretty surprised by one of the recent abuse incidents, and reviewing power for AfCs is at least as much a concern for abuse as reviewing power for PC. I don't think it has to be as limited as autopatrolled (you can learn a lot about our policies before hitting 50 article creations), but I do think that being able to demonstrate a clear understanding of our most common notability/verifiability/copyright/etc. guidelines would be a sensible minimum bar. --j⚛e decker^talk 06:09, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

  I think the reviewer permission would be a good fit to avoid adding a new permission level. --j⚛e decker^talk 03:24, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support - As has been seen at here, new users come along constantly and use the system to their advantages, and we are always getting inexperienced reviewers. I feel that an AFCH whitelist won't do, as it is possible to do it without the right. Mdann52 (talk) 07:34, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
• Question I support the idea itself, but I don't think it is technically feasible nor desirable to include another permission specifically for this. Technically speaking AFC is just a set of talk pages that are used for another purpose. At the same time these talk pages must be freely editable by anyone, so one cannot restrict people from reviewing (Which is just a change to the template's parameters). Besides this, Project-specific permissions aren't something you wish to code into an application.

What we can do is limit the usage of the AFCH helper script. We could create a protected page that lists the editors that are allowed to use the script - Anyone not on that list wouldn't be able to load the script (It could just generate a popup that states the user has no access in that case). This does not restrict manual reviews and neither will it prevent anyone from adapting the script itself to circumvent the check. Having said that manual reviews are much slower, and adapting the script in such a manner screams bad faith (we could create a policy regarding this matter as well) Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 09:11, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I add my voice to the "Creating a whitelist for the AFCH is a bad idea". Yes we've had some rather bright lights focused on AfC due to black hat users leveraging AFCH to give credence to questionable submissions. The solution is to warn them off from the AfC process and encourage them to go contribute productively elsewhere. Personally, I'd much rather prefer that users be required to use the AFCH when reviewing as it cleans up a lot of problems (such as unsigned/undated reviews, not leaving a message for the submitter, organizing the AFC submission templates/comments, etc.) that can occur when someone manually declines. Hasteur (talk) 14:57, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose A new user rights is not the solution to every problems and I can't see any upside to giving out a new bauble. Detaching move page from autoconfirmed isn't going to happen anytime soon due to the fact that AfC isn't the only time people move pages from one namespace to another. --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 13:31, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

While your general principle is correct, can you think of another good example where an editor would want to move a page specifically from project talk space to article space? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support having having come across a lot of extremely poor reviewing and some disturbing blatant abuse of the process. How this control can be physically achieved however, needs further examination; I do not strictly believe in creating new user rights which would be a boon for the hat collectors (all maintenance areas are a magnet young and/or inexperienced editors), besides which, if a site software tweak is required there is the chance that the Foundation would simply refuse to do it anyway. Nevertheless, if access to the AfC reviewer templates/tools could be restricted in some other way, I would suggest making an application to use them at WP:PERM/RV, they could be asked to make the application there and we could accord them the 'Reviewer' flag and monitor their AfC participation manually and ask them to stop if required. Probably everyone who reviews pages has read the instructions, so if those instructions start with a threshold of minimum experience and a requirement for users to register themselves here, it would be possible to monitor their performance before it gets out of hand. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:03, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support The main issue I see is with AFC Helper, which allows fast reviewing of many articles, that is where a lot of damage comes from. One such instance is here. I think we have to ensure that the people who are reviewing are experienced enough, but short of making a permission, restricting the damage they can do in a short period of time will help. I have mentioned autopatrolled as an option to use AFCH in the past (with which I have been met with much disagreement), however I would suggest that if we were to us AP, we could change the criteria to 50 articles or 50 (or more) successful (read: approved) manual AfC reviews (as with 50 successful reviews you should know what an article should look like). --kelapstick^(bainuu) 06:47, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm only guessing, but as far as I can see from patrolling pages, those with autopatrolled status are not necessarily editors who have an interest in doing back-room work. I think requiring Atopatrolled status would be setting the bar far too high and would exclude the wrong people from reviewing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• Page Creation != Evaluating notability/referencing/viability of a proposed article. To use a case in point: I don't have autopatrolled. I know the ins and outs of the rules, but I haven't really made a whole lot of created pages. I'm much more interested in gnomish activities than writing articles that are enduring, yet with your proposed change, I would be excluded from AfC reviewing because I don't have expertiese that isn't already covered by existing articles. I do agree there needs to be a minimum competence and oversight in the the AfC process, but locking down the tool only serves to make more work for those of us who do the gnoming activities (including adding declining user/declined timestamp). Hasteur (talk) 18:42, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

  Hasteur: Reviewer, instead of autopatrolled? Still too much? Closer? --j⚛e decker^talk 18:57, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: I've been on Wikipedia for many years and been an admin for several. I even do some of the more complicated tasks. However, even I find the AfC review system extremely complicated, and it baffles me how some of the users are able to handle it. That said, I still think that Autopatrolled would be to set the bar far too high, and also does not necessary demonstrate a knowledge of some of the more complex features of Wikipedia outside creating straightforward articles. I would go with the threshold required for PC reviewer (which is deliberately low - lower in fact even than Rollbacker), and keep a close eye on all new AfC reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: I think several people have got confused over my mention of "autopatrolled". I mentioned autopatrolled as a well known example of a permission editors request regularly at WP:RPE. I wasn't suggesting the "AFC reviewer" permission was at the same level of it at all. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support - Reviewer seems to be a good bar for new AfC reviewers. Most administrators haven't even written 50 articles. Obviously, we will have to consider changing the permission guidelines because right now Reviewing is mostly a counter-vandalism permission rather than one focused on notability. Passing this would probably raise the bar for the reviewer right. You have to know about vandalism and BLP in addition to knowing notability and article standards, which may just as well be a good thing as I've seen lots of complaints now about how reviewer could have been set higher. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 21:41, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

• 'Very strong support this is basically what is needed. People who understand what is needed for an article can work within any structure; while people who are still only beginning to learn will do similar damage at AfC orany other system. What we will need in any case is a way to teach them. DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
• No. I'll Support a restructuring of the Reviewer rights to raise its bar so as to include AFC reviewer requirements for all practical purposes. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 03:29, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Soni, I think you mean "Yes" -- this is essentially what is being suggested. DGG ( talk ) 05:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• Use Reviewer. The effect of a rejected PC and a rejected AfC are similar enough. Both keep content hidden from the public-facing parts of the site, while keeping it visible to all in (page history | WT namespace) for further review. Anyone trusted to do either can be trusted to do both. Kilopi (talk) 02:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
• Strong Support Seems like it would fix the problem of inexperienced reviewers very well. ★★King•Retrolord★★ 04:21, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes. I would suggest, as a starting point, setting a threshold at 3 months on Wikipedia, 1,000 uncontested non-minor mainspace edits, plus at least 200 correct manual/Twinkle vandal and/or PC reverts, a clean block log for 1-year, and then subject to admin discretion as at WP:PERM. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

A rather ridiculous suggestion. Will it only be available to accounts older than one year? Otherwise not much point insisting on a clean block log for that long. Or was that just to spite me, Kudpung? ★★King•Retrolord★★ 05:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

You read too much between the lines, my friend. I was a major campaigner for qualifications for reviewers/patrollers long before you probably even thought of editing Wikipedia ;) That's one of the reasons the Foundation gave us the Page Curation tool - not that it did much good though, because, like AfC, it's still only of any real use in the hands of experienced users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support per DGG again, and Kudpung's "starting point" for qualifications does not seem unreasonable to me. Begoon ^talk 05:03, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support. This is the real problem. AfC attracts a lot of incompetents, for a variety of reasons including very well meaning (desiring to better understand the criteria by becoming involved, or to give back after going through it oneself). Yngvadottir (talk) 20:00, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support - We're dealing with the potential issue of yet another permission (or hat, whichever way you see it) being granted on permission, but reviewer is too widely given to be of any significance for AFC, and there are too many shoddy AFC reviews that I keep on seeing. If we have any plans whatsoever to direct newer users to AFC or an equivalent drafting process rather than direct mainspace, we really need this user-right so as to improve the AFC reviewing process and it's level. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 05:17, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
• Strong support - This is a very good idea. APerson (talk!) 19:23, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
• Current AFC does not seem to have the manpower to keep up with the number of submissions. Any restriction on becoming an AfC reviewer would further exacerbate this problem. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 11:14, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
• Support I'm not a reviewer but I've read over the guidelines several times and still find the process daunting. have a fair amount of experience reviewing written submissions (from the academic world and teaching) so I think if I'm finding it confusing, I can't imagine a newbie just jumping in and accepting or rejecting articles. I wouldn't make the bar that high, just have each applicant review 3 AfCs and have an experienced reviewer check them out (if this is technically possible). It would at least demonstrate that the reviewer understands the reviewing guidelines and, if there are glaring errors or misjudgments, they can be addressed before the new reviewer has done much damage. Liz ^{Let's Talk} 19:41, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Another discussion: The elusive "Draft:" namespace

There have been many discussions about draft namespaces in the past. I would like to combine them all with this simple proposal:

There have been many AfC reform proposals recently. I'd like to show you guys mine. I propose a new namespace, a "Draft:" namespace. ALL new articles from non-autopatrolled users would enter this namespace first. A reviewer would check the article, and if it looked good, it would be moved to mainspace. Those reviewers would need to have the reviewer user right. "Draft:"s would remain available for six months without any edits, and then would be deleted. Remember that the new users can request WP:REFUND if they return. The existing tools we have (WP:NPT and WP:AFCH) can be repurposed. Remember, never say something can't be implemented because of a codebase. If the codebase doesn't work, change it.

It's short, simple, and gets right to the point. Since the days of WP:ACTRIAL, I have wanted to see something like this implemented. Comments? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:14, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support the namespace - With Flow coming down the road for all talk spaces, our continuing reliance on Wikipedia Talk: for AfC drafts is going to have to end. User space is not a replacement--IP editors lack their own User namespace. While it might be possible to hack around the upcoming collision of our use of WT: with the oncoming train of Flow, I believe there are also a number of ways in which being able to tailor or protections, filters, and limits on a Drafts namespace would allow us to better manage both the AfC process and the larger process of protecting the encyclopedia. I'm still thinking out the implications of the other parts of this, but I feel we really need the "Draft namespace" part of this proposal whether or not we accept the rest. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - I completely forgot about Flow. That's going to cause more problems. I wish the WMF would go ahead and acknowledge that we exist and help us with software issues like this and stop pretending we are unofficial hackers. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
• Obvious support. By far the best suggestion in this entire RfC; also, one which the WMF have already had tabled to them and given an approving nod to -- except perhaps the auto-patrolled bit. Pol430 talk to me 19:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
• Other benefits of the Draft: namespace would be that all potential BLP vios. copyvios and all other forms of vanispamcruftisement would be in one area as opposed to spread all over in user pages/AfC/Incubator/etc., so it would be easy to check for problems. A bot like CorenSearchBot (talk · contribs) could check for copyvios. An adminbot could delete pages automatically after a set period of time. Blah, blah, blah. I won't list all the benefits since you get the idea. 64.40.54.134 (talk) 02:12, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
• Consolidating all drafts into one namespace is a great idea. I don't know how many copyvios there are in userspace, and I'm not sure if anybody bothers checking. Will the A CSDs apply to this namespace? MER-C 07:00, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I would put forward the idea that a lot narrower set of D## CSD criteria and all G of course would apply. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 15:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support This is a quite good idea, although steps must be taken to ensure that it doesn't become the incubator round 2.Tazerdadog (talk) 07:54, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support per everyone else. I have explained elsewhere why a new namespace would help get around technical bodge jobs, and improve usability as, unlike now, users will have an actual talk page to talk about the draft. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:13, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support - This is a great idea. It would be much more helpful the Project talk namespace. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 23:36, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
  • See comment below. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 17:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support a creation of such a namespace, even if only to replace the hackishness of using Wikipedia talk for AFC drafts. No opinion on requiring all new articles to go through Draft space before mainspace.— This, that and the other (talk) 06:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - As I stated above, the same steps would be taken as they are now to make sure the new namespace wouldn't become clogged. Addionally, autopatrolled users would be the only users who could directly create to mainspace, at least in my proposal. The existing reviewer right would be the ONLY right required to review drafts (though I suppose this could cause issues with people reviewing their own articles, perhaps add a technical prevention on own article reviewing?). --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 14:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: I was one of the major initiators and proponents of WP:ACTRIAL. This current proposal seems to be so similar that I doubt it would fly. FWIW, be it reminded, ACTRIAL was only to be a trial in order to prove or disprove the idea and gather some stats, but it was shot down by the Foundation, and in an extremely impolite manner. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:49, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support A draft namespace sounds like a very appropriate place to direct newer editors to work on articles. It could help resolve redundancy between userpages, AfC draft pages and other related drafts (Article incubator immediately comes to mind) TheOriginalSoni (talk) 03:29, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support namespace. Agree with TT&O on technical merits over WT:AFC. Kilopi (talk) 02:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: I think some people are missing the point here or have not read the entire discussion. This concept is again so close to that of WP:ACTRIAL that the WMF would probably overrule any consensus for it. The WMF philosophy is to allow all registered users to create directly in mainspace, and unless they can agree that the situation has got worse, and indeed out of hand, there is little chance that they will waver from their ideology. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:27, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Kudpung, we would still leave users the option of creating in mainspace. The hope is there would be a smaller number, and they'd be looked at. The difference to the new user is that he they go the mainspace route, the result of a rejection is likely to be a deletion, not just a try it again. If they want to take the chance, of having a full open community process and the article isnt so bad it would fail speedy, my view has been to simply let them. The probelm is getting good reviewers on all sides of the process. People could still choose as they do now to ignore a review and put it in mainspace themselves, whether by move or copypaste, would be looked at there. (we do need a good way to catch the self0moves--that;s one of the gaps in the present system. DGG ( talk ) 05:37, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The probelm is getting good reviewers on all sides of the process. - you said it - and that's what I have been saying before, and ever since ACTRIAL. ACTRIAL was a knee jerk with several consequences, but in spite of their rejection and quickly offering a very good solution that they never continued to develop, the Foundation has not been much help. We need to find a solution now that will be acceptable to the WMF, but even if it gets decided to create a user right (heaven forbid) for AfC reviewers and/or NPPers, the Foundation would have to do the software tweak, and their comment on that was "We don't need a whole priesthood of gatekeepers". Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

• After reviewing the proposal one more time, I'm striking my !vote for now. The amount of work and the sheer backlog of new articles that would enter the AfC process if ALL new articles from non-autopatrolled users is going to be unworkable. Right now, I support the creation of a new namespace. However, the side-proposals to require AfC for non-autopatrolled and only allow reviewers to review submissions should be discussed in a different section of the RfC, and they are. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 17:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I oppose the requiring of all non-autopatrolled editors to enter the AfC process. And as Kudpung mentioned, that's even more restrictive than WP:ACTRIAL.

Far more restrictive. It would never fly so it's moot already. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Michaelzeng7 (talk) 17:51, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment I support having this namespace, but not using it as specified; we could use it for various purposes--one of which would be to replace the article incubator, another to replace user subpages, and a third to be a place to conduct the AfC process. One of the most confusing things about AfC isw that every submission is s subpage, all of a single page in WP Talk space, This is wholly irrational--it was a quick kludge to keep them NOINDEX. The one essential thing of all these processes is the need to keep the NOINDEX, or people will use them as FALSEARTICLES. If we put them in a rational place, and gave them rational categories, including subject categories, we could more easily deal with them, sand wee wouldhn't have to deal with the continual mistakes from people putting them in the wrong space. DGG ( talk ) 05:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I would support having a new namespace instead of submissions being on a talk page. It would allow for proper discussion about each submission, and, most importantly, enable the use by reviewers of all appropriate CSD criteria. A very large number of submissions are ready candidates for summary deletion per A1, A3, G1, G2, G3, G10, G11, and G12. Still doesn't address the quality of reviewing though. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to suggest A1 and A3 for submissions, because they can be improved. Even for G11, improvement is possible, and I apply it a little more tolerantly than in mainspace. But I agree the key thing is the improvement of reviews. The mechanics, however important, are secondary. ~

• Support new namespace. No matter what the policies surrounding it are decided to be, consolidating AfC and userspace drafts into a single namespace is a good idea. It will result in clearer page naming, make the process simpler for all users, allow such pages to be automatically NOINDEXed, and will hopefully permit easier checking for copyvios etc. the wub "?!" 13:17, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as written' Though I think there would be various purposes to this space, the actual proposal is exactly the same as requiring all non-autopatrolled users to use AfC, but calling it another name. We need articles and editors. We need to review them properly, but this is forcing most articles from most people to be approved by someone else, rather than writing in mainspace. There are multiple ways of catching new articles: AfC (which could and should be renamed as a trial namespace), userspace drafts (which probably also ought to go to the trial namespace), and NPP--which currently is the part that works best, partly because we have succeeded in getting most of the junk to AfC,which is a non-trivial positive accomplishment. The gap in the system is that we need to identify people moving their own AfCs or userspace drafts to mainspace. (we could modify AfC so they couldn't do it there, but the Move Page command would still work, and if used from any other space to mainspace needs to be trapped, & listed at NPP. We should never discourage or prevent anyone from submitting an article in mainspace. At least, we shouldn't do it till we have exhausted other possibilities. DGG ( talk ) 00:09, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

@DGG: Confused. Your comment seems to contradict your earlier comment of 27 July. Is it possible this comment was meant to be in another section of this RfC? Just thought I'd ask about it. Peace. 64.40.54.20 (talk) 04:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I've clarified it. support the idea of having a draft namespace in which AfCs and other drafts will be located. I absolutely oppose forcing anyone to use it. DGG ( talk ) 19:10, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

What was ACTRIAL, and why is this RfC not going anywhere?

It appears (to me at least) that although the 'ACTRIAL' acronym has been use eleven times (13 now) already during this RfC, that very few of the participants have taken the initiative to read WP:ACTRIAL and its talk page which is equally important. It won't take long, it's actually quite short - no more than five or ten minutes in fact. It may however take a bit longer to sit back and reflect upon it and its implications and understand why this current RfC isn't going to go anywhere soon. For those who still can't be bothered to read it, 'ACTRIAL' comes from 'Autoconfirmed users, trial'. The proposal was to insist on autoconfirmed status for the creation of pages in mainspace. There were no other conditions for non confirmed accounts, and the project was proposed along with a full set of templates already created for this purpose. Emphasis was on trial because although not required by the consensus, in deference to those who suggested a trial first, this is what was requested at Bugzilla and immediately rejected by a senior developer. The ACTRIAL project didn't happen just over night, it was the result of several months of work by a dedicated team whose only intention was to reduce the backlog at NPP and improve the quality of patrolling. It was not, as was claimed at Bugzilla, the work of a bunch of exclusionists.

IMO, the only, and best way to move forward is to establish some minimum qualifications for new reviewers, and for experienced, established users to closely watch their first reviews, and to impose the same set of conditions on New Page Patrollers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but surely we could enforce this using an Edit filter, rather than going begging to the devs again. Mdann52 (talk) 15:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

You know, I really wish someone had proposed an edit filter when we had the ACTRIAL gain consensus; if we could have left WMF out of it, we could have potentially gotten this improvement through and been able to prove its utility to the obstructionists at WMF by the time they decided to thumb their noses at us. Nyttend (talk) 18:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That idea may be too little too late by now, but if consensus here is to try that then I'm sure by the time the WMF gets wind it'd already be implemented. Whether they'd let it stay or not... ~Charmlet ^-talk- 18:16, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

As Mdann said, Edit filters, policies enforceable by CSD, etc. are all ways to enforce this without the technical side of it. However, there is no way that option will pass. The issue with this RfC is far too many people are opposing everything than are supporting something. If you oppose 6 things, and support 1, then there's a 6:1 ratio of oppose to support on every option (theoretically). Thus, there's no way to judge consensus by voting, because some people are opposing just because "i like another one better", but not because "i actually oppose this idea completely". ~Charmlet ^-talk- 16:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That is an endemic problem with RfCs that propose more than one idea or solution. Even ones that propose a single motion end up getting forked, so the available commentators/electorate get diluted among the different ideas, leaving little or no quorum for any of them. I could have said so at the beginning that this RfC was going to be flawed. That said, the Foundation was so vehement that any suggestion to prevent registered users from creating directly in mainspace is contrary to Global Policy, that from the way they brutally rejected ACTRIAL, I'm in no doubts that if they see a new consensus consensus developing along those lines, they will use their ultimate authority to squash it. Thus the only solutions are suggestions for improving the quality of reviewing - and that's another RfC, and please with only one motion, and if that fails, start another one. It would mean using the same strategy as Dank did with his series of RfCs for RfA reform earlier this year, but even they failed for lack of turnout. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:24, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

More: RfCs with the high turnout and clear consensus such as for WP:ACTRIAL are very rare. It was a good faith attempt to get something done about the quality of NPP, and was indeed a serious knee-jerk all round. In that, it succeeded. I most strongly recommend that anyone interested in the fate of Articles For Creation take 30 minutes to read the huge Bugzilla discussion, understand all its implications, red herrings, and denials, and then understand why two years further on AfC (and to some extent also NPP) is still a broken process and try to question why the Article Creation Workflow project, created by the Foundation as a genuinely viable solution to ACTRIAL, was neatly archived away out of sight once the heat was off. AfC has been hacked together and rehacked in the very best of intentions by volunteers who know what they are doing, including the various clean-up campaigns, but at the end of the day, it attracts the wrong people to the task of processing the submissions as clearly demonstrated recently. It's a highly complicated process, and it is causing far more problems than solutions. Time for a wake up call and revisit the Foundation's shelved, but albeit excellent Article Creation Workflow project. Attempts to discuss these issues at Wikimania 2012 were also quashed (see: also: this neatly archived recent discussion).

Further essential reading - most of this is about NPP, but the implications are the same, and it's relevant to how any solutions to AfC can be addressed, and what, if any, cooperation could be expected from the Foundation:

• Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Archive 2#Screencast
• Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Archive 2#Most of these articles have all been informally "patrolled" - results of a random sample
• Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Archive 2#If we could have a new patrolling interface, what should it be?
• Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Archive 2#Improving
• NPP comment
• The behaviour of an employee documented here - read the whole thread.
• A comment by DGG one year ago

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Playing the "Lets sneak this in under the radar and refuse to take no for an answer" game isn't going to go anywhere positive. --Guerillero | My Talk 08:47, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

This RFC was flawed

The basic reason why this RFC is going nowhere is because it was inherently flawed in having seven options for !votes, which guaranteed that there would be no consensus. The least undesirable way to close it might be to summarize whether there were more !votes favoring the use of mainspace or favoring the use of AFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:21, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Imho, the least undesirable way to close it is to just come out with what consensus exists. That may be a consensus that AfC sucks and mainspace sucks, but the other two (seperateish) proposals have strong support. Or maybe the close is going to become "well, this didn't have a majority vote, heck none did, but the consensus seems to be flowing in this direction, further comment is needed" type thing. Who knows? ~Charmlet ^-talk- 03:20, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a common misconception on Wikipedia that RfC closures must be accompanied by a recommended action, rather than just summing up. Summing up here would not be difficult to do as the consensus is pretty clear: 1. The Foundation won't allow any solutions that prevent all registered users from crating articles in mainspace (which is in fact a statement of existing fact that does not need to be arrived at by consensus). 2. AfC is so flawed that it either needs to be replaced by something else or radically redesigned. 3. The quality of of reviewing urgently needs to be addressed (a demonstrated fact), and probably by introducing training and/or minimum qualifications for reviewers (the subject of a new RfC).

All that is need here now is someone who has not voted to summarise it and close it. Keeping it open much longer won't help because the only interested audience are those who work at AfC or who are monitoring its function. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

@Kudpung: The Foundation hasn't even commented wrt this RfC, so your statement number 1 would be incorrect. You can't sum up what isn't here in this RfC. However, a summuppance would be the best closure. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 15:37, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

• The reason it isn;t going anywhere is there is no consensus to support any of the measures as written. This should be withdrawn, and an alternate proposal for having a draft namespace should be initiated, There is no agreement to force or strongly recommend people to write outside of mainspace, except for those with COI. The extent to which we recommend that others do is a relatively minor issue of wording. DGG ( talk ) 19:34, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. An uninvolved administrator should close this whole thing as no consensus, and someone should start another RFC for having a draft namespace. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

There is strong enough consensus (imo) here to at least say there's consensus for having the draft namespace - an implementation RfC can be held later along with WMF/developer staff on how to technically make it happen. For the rest, it'd be great for a closing administrator to summarize all comments, not just say "no consensus". ~Charmlet ^-talk- 21:35, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

• There is burgeoning support for establishing both a user right (of some kind) for AfC Reviewer, and for creating an AfC namespace for submissions. Following talks with senior Foundation executives during Wikimania, the WMF has demonstrated that they are critically aware that something needs to be done and provided any solutions do not conflict with global policies, would be ready to implement any necessary software tweaks recommended by a consensus, and for the namespace, they have even made an interesting suggestion.

I therefore feel that this current RfC has now done what it can and ought to be wrapped up by a non-involved editor. The next step should then be to create two separate, stand-alone, major RfC/Cent to address the need for a namaspace and reviewer qualifications. IMHO, in order to present such RfCs, they should be prepared by a dedicated small taskforce. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:02, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Kudpung. Charmlet (talk · contribs) has made a request for closure at WP:ANRFC. "the WMF has demonstrated that they are critically aware that something needs to be done... they have even made an interesting suggestion." I'll bite, what was the interesting suggestion they made? Thanks. 64.40.54.46 (talk) 01:19, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Did I not hit save when I posted here saying I requested closure? Embarrassing.... ~Charmlet ^-talk- 01:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.