Wikivoyage talk:Recent changes patrol

I'd noticed the same problem with bundles of edits. Also, I'd think that a) edits by admins should always count as patrolled, and b) if an edit gets rolled back, it should also count as patrolled. I'll try to get to these nuisances quickly. Right now, I'm enjoying the feature a lot. --(WT-en) Evan 20:13, 14 December 2006 (EST)

Updates

OK, so: I was wrong about rollbacks; they are automatically patrolled. Also, admins can set a preference to automatically patrol their own edits. I've set this to default to "on" less than an hour ago, and all admins should automatically pick it up unless they've edited their preferences in the last 36 hours since I turned this option on. I've taken the liberty of retroactively marking all edits by admins as patrolled up till now.

I'm going to see what I can do to get patrolling of clusters of edits done quickly; it's the last real annoyance of this feature. --(WT-en) Evan 22:03, 15 December 2006 (EST)

It didn't get picked up by my prefs automatically as far as I can tell -- and I haven't changed a pref in a month. I set it. -- (WT-en) Colin 22:49, 15 December 2006 (EST)

Argh. Now that I think of it, your prefs are saved automatically quite often in MediaWiki -- and if they were saved since yesterday, they'll have the old default (don't autopatrol). So, please change your prefs, admins.

On a related note, I did a little hacking on MW, and I've been able to shoehorn in the ability to mark a whole bundle of edits as patrolled in one pop. I made one assumption about the recentchanges table that I think is correct, but if you see weird behavior, please let me know. --(WT-en) Evan 23:05, 15 December 2006 (EST)

I'm not seeing this...? Eg. [1] has no 'patrol' link. (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:44, 16 December 2006 (EST)

That's weird. So, you've got "Enhanced recent changes" set up, and when you click on the word "changes" in the "2 changes" for My Son on Special:Recentchanges, you don't get a "mark as patrolled" link? --(WT-en) Evan 01:49, 16 December 2006 (EST)

A-ha, you were missing that crucial little bit. So yes, the enhanced view does give the patrolled link. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:18, 16 December 2006 (EST)

One minor annoyance...when a new article gets created and then edited a bunch of times, Recent changes groups the edits together, but I lose the ability to mark the original article (or the bundle) as patrolled. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 11:50, 19 December 2006 (EST)

Yes, I've noticed that too! I know the line in the code to fix, so I'll give it a shot today or tomorrow. I think the conventional wisdom on RCP is pretty fair (that it's not quite ready for prime time), but the fixes needed have been small. I think after we stabilize it here on WT I'll commit the changes to MediaWiki core for the 1.9 release or 1.10 release. --(WT-en) Evan 12:00, 19 December 2006 (EST)

This is fixed now (I think). You should be able to patrol clusters of edits on a new article. --(WT-en) Evan 18:08, 4 January 2007 (EST)

Thanks

So, I got up this morning expecting to go through hundreds and hundreds of changes. I was very pleased to see all but the latest (<30 minutes old) changes already patrolled. It felt great to know that someone else had already checked out the latest work on the site.

Thanks to all who have been using this feature; I'm finding it a very convenient way to coordinate the more tedious administrative tasks. --(WT-en) Evan 13:14, 24 December 2006 (EST)

Agreed. I'm finding I'm using it in two ways I didn't expect to:

1. Even good edits often have something (e.g. spelling) that needs to be fixed, sometimes in surrounding text. While I'm patrolling an edit, it's pretty easy to make a quick fix.
2. When I see an edit I don't like that's not outright vandalism (e.g. something I can't tell if it's a 3rd party site, a description that may make an article less readable), I often just skip patrolling it, figuring some other editor will have a better idea what to do with it.

My enthusiasm will inevitably flag once I'm no longer on vacation, but hopefully enough of us will like this idea that we can consistently patrol all recent changes. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 23:07, 24 December 2006 (EST)

I hope you don't skip patrolling the same edits I skip hoping someone else has a better idea what to do. 8) -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 00:26, 25 December 2006 (EST)

Policy for Admins using Recent changes patrol?

Whew, it is good.... but. I think we need to define what patrolled means. I find myself keeping busy editing recent additions. And it is a LOT of work. So, when we mark it as patrolled does that mean the change is 100% for format, policy, etc. or just not something that needs reverted, or something in between. I find myself leaving a lot unmarked because it seems hardly anyone is following what we have laid down and it seems to be getting worse. Also, we need to research everything added? Should be resist our patrol to only areas we have knowledge of? I am just thinking we need a pretty good policy so we are all on the same page. I would like to hear Evan's thoughts on what he is hoping for as part of this discussion. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 12:05, 27 December 2006 (EST)

I've been marking things patrolled if they are not obvious vandalism/graffiti (ie rollbacks or quick edits). That's not to say that I don't dive in with general MoS edits once in a while, or add the style template if it's going to need a group effort.. I don't think we-admins should take this patrol tool to mean that we have to be responsible for vetting all contributions all the time-- it's a wiki after all! It might be nice to formalize what "patrolled" should mean though... so good question. (WT-en) Maj 19:06, 27 December 2006 (EST)

I think this is something we're going to have to develop over time. My goal with enabling RC Patrol was to have a way to say, "An admin needs to look at this change before it scrolls off of Recent Changes." My rule of thumb for patrolling edits is that either an edit is so bad that it needs to be rolled back right now, or it can wait until someone gets to it, so I mark it as patrolled. So, I roll back these things:

• vandalism
• spam
• obviously inappropriate extlinks
• re-formatting headers (like "Eat" -> "Restaurants")
• toolbar cruft (stuff that comes from the GUI toolbar or edit tools)

I mark these things as patrolled and let them go:

• poorly-formatted listings
• bad spelling
• incorrect grammar
• badly formatted phone numbers, addresses, etc.
• borderline stuff like bus schedules, toutish listings

I mark these as patrolled, but try to edit them:

• Orphaned new articles
• clusters of changes that are good and bad, typically adding lots of info but re-formatting all the standard section headers
• stubs for valid destinations

I don't think we want or need to make every edit to Wikivoyage perfect before it scrolls off of the Recent Changes list. However, I do think we want to correct the more obvious problems. --(WT-en) Evan 11:34, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I confess to being quite inconsistent in what I do with this feature, largely depending on simply how much free time I have when I'm patrolling. My use pattern seems to be much as Evan and Maj describe, but if I lack time to do edits, I am perhaps more willing to look at an article and NOT mark it patrolled than to let certain classes of changes through -- particularly touts. Sorry if that creates more work for the rest of you folks, who then "re-patrol" the things I've left unmarked, but IMO marking a thing "patrolled" should mean that it meets basic criteria for acceptability, even if grammar, typography, etc., are subpar. Touts don't do that.

Maybe I missed it, but is there a way to look only for articles in the last (foo) days that haven't been patrolled, extending deeper into the past than the "Recent changes" tab? I wonder what all is slipping through the cracks because of my (or other folks') unwillingness to take decisive action in these toutish cases. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 12:45, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I agree that if you think an edit is too close to call, just go ahead and leave it unpatrolled. If a page really needs a lot of discussion, I'd probably say that someone should mark it as patrolled and start a discussion on the Talk: page.

And, yes, there's a flag to "Hide patrolled edits" [2] that you can click on the Recent changes page. --(WT-en) Evan 12:55, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I've been doing more or less what Evan has been doing, except I'm more likely to fix spelling (I really like the way Firefox 2.0 makes spell-checking easy). I've also created a link in my toolbar to the unpatrolled changes, which a) makes it easier to sort out which changes need patrolling and b) helps catch stuff even after it scrolls off. (And by the time I get around to clicking "Save Page" I see that Evan has already provided the link. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 13:16, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I like the convention of dealing with something that's not vandalism or graffiti but needs attention by marking it as patrolled and then making a note on the talk page (which will then show up as unpatrolled). Maybe we leave talk pages unpatrolled as a RFC-type flag? Or would that make too much cruft? (WT-en) Maj 13:21, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I'm late to this conversation - sorry! - but I think it's beneficial if changes are only marked as patrolled when the change is something that does not require further attention (follows MOS, not vandalism, etc) OR if the change has later been edited to fix any problems. Seeing a red "!" next to an edit is a good indicator that the edit either needs to be examined or needs attention. This approach seems like an easy way to highlight problem edits, helping to focus the attention of people doing cleanups. This solution would be faster than leaving notes on talk pages, and I'm personally less likely to read the talk page of a random article than I am to look at an unpatrolled edit and make a quick fix. -- (WT-en) Ryan 03:54, 2 January 2007 (EST)

I would have agreed with you if this weren't an admin-only feature through and through, i.e. only the admins can mark it as patrolled, only admins can see the exclamation marks. There simply aren't enough admins to do that many checks. We'd end up leaving most changes unpatrolled and they wouldn't even serve as warnings to other users as they can't see them. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 04:58, 2 January 2007 (EST)

As long as the patrolling stuff is available for the rest of us non-admins, I believe we desperately need to define what people should mean when they click "Mark as patrolled". I.e. we need a consensus on which checks (and meaning) do we all include in "patrolled". --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 07:55, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Should/can we patrol *all* recent changes?

Well, after some effort, I've gotten it down to only 10 articles with unpatrolled changes for 2007. (In my time zone.) Undoubtedly more are appearing as I type this, but this raises the question (in my mind, at least) about whether we should have a goal of patrolling all recent changes. Over the past couple of weeks, every day a number of changes go by without being marked as patrolled. (Some days more than others.) Ultimately, should we not be at least looking over each of those changes? -- (WT-en) Jonboy 19:55, 1 January 2007 (EST)

When I'm online, I review the last 500 recent changes, and try to patrol all of them. The only ones I miss are the ones that can't be patrolled because they're in a cluster of edits on a new article. I guess I think we should try to patrol all the edits that go by, although I don't think it's catastrophic if we don't. --(WT-en) Evan 21:22, 1 January 2007 (EST)

OK, other than some test edits on 11 Jan, we have no unpatrolled edits for this year from before 28 January. I think that's pretty good, and I would argue for that as a continued goal. It's not catastrophic to fail to meet this goal, but a number of times I patrol a day-old edit, only to find that it needs to be reverted because it's spam or vandalism. I really like this because it can eliminate 95+% of the long-term spam/vandalism problem. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 20:19, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Minor bug

One minor bug that's still left. I think I'm describing this correctly, and I think I successfully reproduced this. If someone creates a new page and then someone (perhaps someone else) #REDIRECTS to another page, you can't patrol the group of edits properly with "Enhanced recent changes." If you click on the new page in Recent Changes, you get taken to the new page, but can't patrol the old page. A somewhat obscure bug, perhaps, but it seems to appear about once or twice a day, generally when a newbie creates an article-that's-not-really-an-article, and an non-admin #REDIRECTs to the appropriate article. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 09:46, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Yup. See User:(WT-en) Sapphire/ssfsdfvd`. Do we want to bother with a bug report? -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 10:18, 11 January 2007 (EST)

I'm not sure I understand. I just added a new article in my workspace, then redirected it to another new article, and clicking on the article name of the first page on RecentChanges will let me (and you) patrol the edit of the first page. --(WT-en) evanp 10:41, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Yeah, but that's not exactly what he's talking about. If you create Cincy and then redirect it to an article that already exists, like Cincinnati you won't be able to mark it as patrolled. If you look at the page you created and redirected it's impossible to mark that page as patrolled, but it's possible to mark the other new page as patrolled, since it hasn't been redirected. -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 10:55, 11 January 2007 (EST)

This is possible now... after it redirects you to the new page, there is still a [Mark this page as patrolled] button at the bottom right (WT-en) - Cacahuate 19:08, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Autopatrol for non-admin users

So, we've got quite a few users who produce very consistent high-quality output, but aren't interested in becoming admins — User:(WT-en) JRHorse and User:(WT-en) OldPine come to mind. Would it be possible to flip the autopatrol bit for them, by (say) giving admins the right to select users for this? (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:53, 18 January 2007 (EST)

I think this would be really useful - Evan, is it possible to do this? There's several users I would nominate for this, it would help a lot (WT-en) - Cacahuate 22:16, 19 February 2007 (EST)

Yeah, I think that would be great. There's a system in MediaWiki for setting access levels for different functions, and I *think* we can add our own user group (like "trusted user", say), and give them a particular feature ("autopatrol"). The thing that's tricky is that you have to be a bureaucrat to set other people's user groups. However, I'd like to have more bureaucrats on en: anyways. --(WT-en) Evan 23:01, 19 February 2007 (EST)

We could certainly start a list for you now anyways, it probably won't be that big to start with, here's some thoughts off the top of my head, I mostly care about the ones that make flurries of edits in large numbers:

• User:(WT-en) WindHorse
• User:(WT-en) Fastestdogever - a new user, but does a ton of tweaks to isIn and article statuses, usually knows right from wrong, and always provides edit summaries anyway so if something else grabs someone's eye they can patrol it
• All admins from other language editions, so their interwiki links, etc are already patrolled

Just thinking too, I'd hate for some regular contributors to feel snubbed or something if they come across the list and see they aren't a "trusted user", maybe we should name it something less charged if a page gets created about it. (WT-en) - Cacahuate 20:03, 24 February 2007 (EST)

I think an easy one is "anyone approved (nominated?) for admin status who does not accept the position." I know there's as only a handful, but it would be a start. I think it's something folks don't need to make a big deal about and they can always ask if they wanted to be added. Agreed that 'trusted user' is a bad name. Maybe something more dry and functional like 'Users patrolled by default'? (WT-en) Maj 20:29, 24 February 2007 (EST)

I think this issue needs to be re-visited. For example, User:(WT-en) Flickety is up for an admin nomination. I think s/he's a great contributor whose edits have greatly enhanced Wikivoyage. But, Flickety has only been around for a few weeks. It would be great to have the option to mark his/her changes as automatically patrolled without making him/her an admin.

I also have another issue with recent changes patrol that I might as well bring up now. I used to check recent changes and do rollbacks, add templates, remove external links, etc. until I realized that someone else (an admin) was going to do that anyway. I thought, why waste my time checking recent changes if someone else was going to do it? Yeah, I know, probably not the best way to look at it, but I doubt I'm the only one.

Maybe the best solution is, as mentioned above, to have some kind of "trusted user" feature that allows them to have their edits automatically patrolled and mark edits as patrolled. Is this possible? -- (WT-en) Fastestdogever 12:15, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

Agreed with the need to revisit this. --(WT-en) Jonboy 08:59, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

I think autopatrol is a good idea for high volume (and trusted) users, like WindHorse, so that we don't see so many red exclamation marks, I'd still love also to get this going. But as for giving users the ability to patrol, if I trusted them that much then I'd just nominate them for admin status. And if they decline, as in WindHorse's case, then I'm not sure we need to get creative about trying to give them extra buttons that they didn't want in the first place  :) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 14:20, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

I agree with Cacahuate. --(WT-en) Jonboy 18:47, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Assuming that we are still devoted to patrolling recent changes, I would like to add my strong support to implement this feature. I don't even bother to patrol logged-in user contributions since the numerous OldPine, Flickety, WindHorse, etc. edits shove all the edits that really need to be patrolled way off the screen. --(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald ^Talk

I've reset the system so that any "autoconfirmed" registered user can patrol edits (and have their own edits auto-patrolled). "Autoconfirmed" users have been registered for 30 days (I can change this number if needed). That should filter out most neerdowells and focus us on edits that really need patrolling. --(WT-en) Evan 11:54, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

Much thanks

So, I've noticed in the last week or so that people have been doing a lot more patrolling, which is just great. Patrolling RC is a tedious job, but I think it really pays off in terms of quality of our guide. I've noticed more and more "gaps" in the unpatrolled edits lately. I think that this is the kind of job that distributes well -- if every admin tries to patrol 10-20 edits whenever they're on the site, we can keep the guides in much better shape. --(WT-en) Evan 10:53, 26 February 2007 (EST)

I agree. Just a tip for patrollers: Use the "hide patrolled edits" feature and start at the bottom. That way, there is less chance of unpatrolled edits slipping away. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 07:47, 10 March 2007 (EST)

Path dependency

The "Mark as patrolled" link does not show up for all diffs. It shows up only when I go there through the recent changes or through my watchlist. I don't see why. When I go through my watchlist, I don't see all changes by a user, only the last one. If I want to see all changes that I need to review, I go to history and look at the diffs... and I don't get an option to mark as patrolled. It should show the mark as patrolled link if there is any intermediate unpatrolled edit. I should be able to verify the overall difference and make up my mind if the article is better off or worse as a result of all the edits put together. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 04:01, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

I agree, I wish for the same thing! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 04:09, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

Auto-patrolling of previous edits

Is there any way we could have edits on an article that were made prior to an admin edit be automatically marked as patrolled? Very often, I find myself marking edits as patrolled that have already been undone by another admin. This would also save a lot of time when dealing with edits that need correction, but shouldn't be reverted (e.g., someone adds a lot of good listings, but deletes the IsIn template by mistake). If an admin could just edit the previous edit (rather than marking as patrolled, then checking the history to see if the necessary corrections were made, then actually doing the edit) that would make things a lot easier. This sort of feature would also remove concerns about how long it takes to manually undo an edit (to provide an explanation), because you would no longer need to first mark as patrolled, then back to changes, then undo.

I realize that last paragraph was a bit convoluted, what I'm asking for is: all edits on an article made prior to an admin edit should be automatically marked as patrolled. --(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald ^Talk 14:35, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Can you live with just automatically marking as patrolled any edit that is undone by someone with RC patrol privileges? --(WT-en) Evan 11:46, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

Definitely, that would be a very useful improvement. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:16, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

patrolling is now available for non-admin?

I wonder why I can see exclamation mark and a link "Mark as patrolled", although I'm not an admin. I don't mind, and I can help with patrolling if someone there trusts me :-), just want to be sure it's intended behaviour, not something that shouldn't happen. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 10:39, 26 June 2007 (EDT)

It's now available to all registered users who've been around for more than 30 days. --(WT-en) Evan 10:39, 26 June 2007 (EDT)

Great! — (WT-en) Ravikiran 03:14, 27 June 2007 (EDT)

What does "patrolled" mean?

As long as the patrolling stuff is available for the rest of us non-admins, I believe we desperately need to define what people should mean when they click "Mark as patrolled". I.e. we need a consensus on which checks (and meaning) do we all include in "patrolled". --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 07:55, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

As of now the policy states "if it doesn't need to be rolled back, mark it as patrolled", which I think was the general view when it was just an admin tool... for the most part I think we were just looking for blatant vandalism, and would correct other MoS errors, etc if we had time. But now that so many people have the ability to patrol edits, I'm thinking maybe we should widen the scope a little for how we use this tool. I don't think we need to only mark "perfect" edits as patrolled, but it might be helpful to hold off on patrolling edits that have sizable MoS problems added to them by an otherwise good edit, unless you've got time to fix it yourself then and there. That way it can still draw the attention of someone who will take the time to clean it up. Anyone opposed to changing the text to reflect that, in a less verbose way than I just described it? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:03, 2 July 2007 (EDT)

I just ran a test and spent around 7 minutes patrolling edits going by the criteria you are proposing, i.e. if there were significant MoS issues, I left the edit unpatrolled. I ran through 4.5 hours worth of recent changes and was left with only some 7 articles unpatrolled for the period. So let's do some maths. We will need at least 6 people who will patrol the site on any day for 7 minutes each. Plus we will probably need a few more who will go over the unpatrolled edits and carry out the MoS edits required - or else it is not much use. Workable, but we need to get people used to this mode of working. This is one of those things that makes sense to do only if others are also doing it. So please raise your hand if you are reading this and are okay with this? (Raises hand.) — (WT-en) Ravikiran 07:09, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

cacahuate, being a non-native speaker, I definitely vote for a more easy-to-understand rules to be defined somewhere in the Project:Recent changes patrol. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 13:12, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

I would also like to clarify the text... but I wanted to make sure most of us are on the same page before I plunged forward on that, as it will help tremendously if everyone patrolling recent changes agrees on what we're patrolling for – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 15:17, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

I agree with what has been said in this section except for the proposal to leave edits that have sizable MoS problems unpatrolled. This would mean that the next patroller would need to look over the same edits, all the worse since they would all have confusing and ambiguous MoS problems. I say, if you patrolled the edit, mark it as patrolled and let the usual wiki process fix MoS issues over time. So if I were writing the policy off the top of my head:

Fix/revert the edits that absolutely should not stay (intentional and unintentional vandalism and spam); mark as patrolled all valid contributions—even those with MoS issues. Of course, if you want to make MoS revisions, feel free!

I think that is pretty close to what people said in the earlier discussion and it matches what I do personally (I do make MoS edits while patrolling, but I prefer to leave that choice to my discretion). Perhaps someone has a more defined notion of what "sizable" MoS problems would entail? Or perhaps, if we are really looking to beef up this feature, we could have a "Marked as needing MoS revision" button? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:15, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

Much better patrolling

So, I got up this morning for my regular RC patrol, and I was surprised to see that there were only a half-dozen unpatrolled edits going back to yesterday morning. That's fantastic. I think the idea of autopatrolling for experienced Wikivoyagers, and opening up RC patrol to more people, has been really successful. Thanks to everyone who's been participating; I think this really helps with the overall quality of our guides. --(WT-en) Evan 08:14, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

Cool! What do you think about the next section up? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:13, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

Auto-approved user violations

I've got a couple of users on es: and pt: that have been auto-approved since they've been around for more than 30 days but who still try to sneak in copyvios and prohibited external links from time to time, so I don't feel comfortable letting their edits go unchecked, yet their edits get no red flag, so it's harder to spot them. I don't think either of them really participate in doing recent changes patrol either. Is there basically nothing I can do about that? I think perhaps 90 days would be a better auto-approval period or perhaps a minimum number of edits. There are also some registered users who, for example, keep the same username and only show up every couple of months and copy their hotel website into its own new article, which I then delete. I'd really like to keep getting red flags for this type of user. (WT-en) Texugo 00:18, 13 July 2007 (EDT)

I finally found this page and caught up with what has been going on for the past eight months. I had sort of guessed I had "trusted user" status at one point (thanks). Since the 30 day rule appeared I've had some misgivings about it and (perhaps through mild paranoia I developed in the 1970s or a general cynical attitude... ah but I digress) have thought I noticed an increase in new user creation without any contributions following from those users. After 30 days, those users will be able to patrol their own edits unless I am mistaken. Not a good thing. I feel that patrol should be revocable by admins, if only because of what Texugo states above. Also, overall, I do not feel that age of account is a good enough enabler for security. RC patrol is a great thing for helping admins. That is clear. (WT-en) OldPine 12:16, 12 August 2007 (EDT)

So as not to leave without a suggestion, perhaps number of edits could be used as an alternative... or just agreement by any three admins. (WT-en) OldPine 12:37, 12 August 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, so I won't go away on this. I've spent a large amount of time patrolling recent edits (like every spare moment of my day) over the past few days, and there is a sustained level of vandalism and persistent spammers--as you probably know. I don't feel we have very good patrol coverage. It's been mostly me and, to a lesser extent a couple of others lately. The math up above on this page about 7 users doing 7 minutes a day or something like that... well.. that ain't happenin', or at least isn't covering it (or you aren't marking them as patrolled). Is anyone checking the auto-patrolling 31 day users? I don't think so, unless it happens to be in the watchlist. Not good.

• 1. Base auto-patrol on number of edits acheived (and if it was possible to do, ones that were reverted would not count). Probably asking a lot of the programmers. (?)

• 2. Have different levels of auto-patrol based on time. Instead of removing the red "!", put a yellow "!" until they have been around a year (or whatever). This is a temporary stopgap since persistent spammers will just age an account or two.

• 3. Allow admins to tag repeating offenders or IP addresses with a different symbol or a different colored !.

This problem will not go away. Something needs to be done to make this more effective. Yeah, RC patrol can be tedious, but many hands make light work. It's important as QC and something that molds and teaches our new users to use correct MoS techniques as well. (WT-en) OldPine 16:15, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

Here, here! I wholeheartedly agree with OldPine. This "trusted user/auto-patrol" feature was a huge mistake! I previously voiced concerns about this, but the lack of any interest turned me off to patrolling edits, something I haven't done much of since this horrible feature was implemented. It allows users like User:(WT-en) Tay to cover their tracks by making small vandal edits that will likely go unnoticed since I don't bother checking edits anymore.

We need to either implement the ideas OldPine has or revert back to the good ol' days when admins had to patrol every edit that was made. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 16:43, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

Actually, I think the most useful way of managing the "trusted user" status would be to enable sysops to be able to mark specific users, so that their edits remain auto-unpatrolled. I don't think we should do away with it, because patrolled edits is a very useful tool for a lot of users who don't have sysop status (we don't want to take it away from (WT-en) Windhorse, for example). We should open a feature request on shared and push the issue with our tech support at IB.

I've found it useful to commit to a certain timeframe on my user page. I'm patrolling every day from 03:00-07:00 GMT—takes me about 10-15 minutes. If 6-8 interested users would commit to a small timeframe like that, we'd have complete coverage. But to OldPine as a bit of advice: don't be a hero, you'll burn out ;) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:55, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

I think it would probably be more effective to go back to admin-only patrolling, and if we're able to make exceptions then give some users patrolling rights. I've pretty much stopped paying attention to the red !'s lately, they don't really seem to carry any weight anymore. I personally find the 30-day autoconfirmed thing totally useless... when we went from not being able to distinguish patrolled edits, to the invention of the red marks it was a great leap forward... and then shortly thereafter it seems the leap was made irrelevant – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:31, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

I think you guys are overstating the disadvantages of autopatrolling experienced users and underestimating the benefits. To stay under the radar, a user will have to edit infrequently enough not to raise suspicion, not edit an article on some active user's watchlist and hope that if caught, the patroller will not go over his contributions and revert or raise an alarm. I am pretty confident that the combined probability of these events is small. Compared to this small cost, the benefits of autopatrolling are huge. If it weren't for the huge reduction in number of edits to patrol, patrolling would have been impossible - the more good edits that I have to fruitlessly check and mark as patrolled, the more likely it is that I'll just say "forget it". I won't be opposed to a feature that gives admins the right to revoke autopatrol for certain users, but I feel that it is not really needed. I think that other suggestions will simply complicate life, either for the developers or for the users.

I understand the sentiment that we need more people to do patrolling. I myself am guilty of raising my hand and not following through the commitment. (I tried to make amends today by spending 15 minutes and cleaning out 6 hours worth of edits. I will try to do more.) But I am not convinced that increasing the workload for those who do the patrolling is going to help. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 23:40, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

How about making users "auto-confirmed" after 6 months instead of 1 month? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 00:29, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

I too find the red !s useless now, here but especially on other language versions where there aren't a large number of regular trustworthy users. I would totally support changing the period to 6 months or doing away with the automatic patrolling altogether because on es: and pt: etc., more than half of the automatic patrol users still need to be corrected. (WT-en) Texugo 00:37, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

One month, six months or number of edits, it will not address the point that it is not well-meaning contributors who are the problem. The learning curve simply does not take that long. When I patrol, I often find myself wishing that I could simply mark all edits by a particular user, including future edits, as patrolled. The problem is a few recalcitrants who will never learn, because their goal is not to build a travel guide, but to link to their favourite sites or to push their own political views. Giving admins the right to switch off auto-patrol rights will address the problem, assuming we have nice admins, which we do. If you guys are saying that the red !s are useless right now, then your solutions are missing the point. The purpose of those !s is to raise an alarm. I may understand 80% of the alarms turning out to be false, but if 99.9% turn out to be false, I will simply ignore them. Your proposals will cause a greater proportion of alarms to be false. The other reason why we are ignoring the red flags is that because no one else is patrolling, every single edit seems to come with a red flag, defeating their purpose. The remedy is to have more patrollers.

Having said that, I agree with Texugo's argument about other languages. But from what I see, the number of edits per day are so few that there is good reason to ignore the red flags and check every single edit. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 13:12, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

I certainly agree there is a need to cut down on the number of edits we have to patrol. But there seems to be consensus for something to change. I think an increase to six months helps, but really just delays things. Not being much of a programmer (and not knowing how available the number is to the coder), I don't know how feasible it is to use "number of edits", but it certainly is a better measure of committment, especially if used in conjunction with a six month term.

Being able to flip auto-patrol off (or on!) for certain users would be a great thing. It may be a no-brainer. Obviously this action by sysops would have to be logged and/or monitored. Notice that it would allow evaluation of the number and quality of edits by a user. (WT-en) OldPine 08:20, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

I'd like to echo Ravikiran's sentiments. I think it is quite an exaggeration to call the unpatrolled markers useless—if I see an anon edit without one, I know it has been patrolled and I won't bother to review it myself. I can say for certain that if we get rid of the auto-confirmed edits for users who have been around a while, I'll stop patrolling altogether. I burnt out on patrolling a while back, but started doing it again regularly once Evan introduced the auto-patrol feature. There were just too many unpatrolled markers before and it felt kind of hopeless. Yes, some users who have been around longer than a month may make unwanted edits, but that number is comparatively tiny compared to the quantity of unwanted edits by anonymous and brand new users.—these edits are a much higher priority for review.

And like it says elsewhere on this talk page, it's not like every edit to Wikivoyage needs to be thoroughly "corrected" by an admin. Even if an edit isn't formatted correctly, or what have you, this is a wiki—someone will eventually come along and correct it. Patrolling IMO is best used to rapidly scan for particularly damaging edits: long spam lists, accidental deletions of content, hate speech vandalism, etc. I also find it useful in that patrolling takes me around to all sorts of articles I wouldn't otherwise check; occasionally I find an article that catches my interest and I get interested in cleaning it up.

With regards to other language versions, the flip side of not having a lot of regular trustworthy editors is that there aren't that many edits in sum. It is often quite possible for one person to review the day's edits in a reasonable amount of time. If a large quantity of patrolled anon edits are making it hard to see the registered user edits that could use review, you can just filter out the anonymous edits on the recent changes display. Still though, I certainly find the patrolled edits feature useful on :es—if there is no flag next to an anon edit, I know I don't have to check it!

The one thing that does, however, undermine the usefulness of patrolled edits is when people correct unwanted edits without marking them as patrolled. That's certainly better than not correcting them at all, but it also uses up the time of other editors who are trying to help by patrolling. And then of course, it would be nice if more people patrolled, but regardless it is always a good thing even if just one person patrols 10 minutes out of their day—that improves Wikivoyage.

As for suggested changes, I'd like to disavow my earlier suggestion that sysops be able to mark certain users as "not worthy of auto-confirmed edits." Such a device would require some sort of nomination process to be fair, and that sort of vetting could potentially be insulting and off-putting to a lot of users. And besides, I just don't think that established users are a high priority for review. The suggestion that we switch the auto-confirmed criteria from 1 month to 6 seems too severe. It does not take 6 months to figure out that you shouldn't change section headers. I do like the idea, though, of using quantity of edits rather than length of time registered to determine when a user gets auto-confirmed edits. Above all, I definitely oppose a return to admin-only patrolling. The majority of the patrolling done in the past few months on :en has been done by users without sysop status—keep in mind that the originator of this discussion is not (yet) an admin. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 12:51, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

My original concern was not about users needing more than one month of ramp time to become knowledgeable or trustworthy. It was more about not leaving an easy opening for perpetrators to avoid showing in the red flags by simply patrolling their own unwanted edits from an aged account. -- (WT-en) OldPine 14:31, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

Well, their own edits would be auto-patrolled, so they wouldn't have to do that. And I think people who do patrol have an idea that edits by "User:IHateN******" are deserving of a quick check, regardless of whether they are flagged. If the worry is that a long time vandal will use their account to mark other vandals' work as patrolled, then I understand that concern. But I haven't seen any evidence that this is happening, and I do take a look at Special:Log now and then. If someone did abuse their account in this manner, I think a block would be appropriate, and then they'd have to wait a full month before they could try their luck again. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:54, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

The concern is more like someone vandalizing/linkspamming anonymously, then using the aged account to patrol it. No little red flag. Everybody thinks it's patrolled. Now we need to watch how users are patrolling, not just their edits? (WT-en) OldPine 15:04, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

Ah well, I suppose there is no consensus here and all this will die. I took a look at the outstanding feature requests on Shared and maybe thoat part was all a pipe dream anyways. Thanks to those who have come back to RC patrol. It's looking much better. (WT-en) OldPine 20:16, 1 October 2007 (EDT)

undoing revision should mark it as patrolled

I suggest that completing an undo for revision should mark it as patrolled--I think it is logical. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 23:56, 14 September 2007 (EDT)

Agreed. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 23:57, 14 September 2007 (EDT)

Me, too. (WT-en) OldPine 07:18, 19 September 2007 (EDT)

Agreed. The folks who added the "undo" feature to MediaWiki don't use the "patrolling" feature, so they didn't bother with it. I'll see what I can do. --(WT-en) Evan 10:03, 20 September 2007 (EDT)

Wikivoyaholism

Thought it'd be a neat thing to do on Wikivoyage, I looked through archives, and it isn't there. So, maybe we could have this for Wikivoyage, [3]? What tdo you thinnk? KEEP SMILING, (WT-en) ee ^talk 19:16, 16 November 2008 (EST).

Red "!" on Special:Recentchanges

Swept in from the pub:

Hey! Well I have a question what the hell is this when you look at RECENT CHANGES: !...I don't get it. Its a red exclamation mark!!!! Keep smiling, (WT-en) edmontonenthusiast [ee] ^.T.A.L.K. 17:29, 17 November 2008 (EST).

It means that the edit is not patrolled. See [4] for more information. BTW, do we use the patrolled edit feature at Wikivoyage for anything and, if so, what does it mean to "mark [an] edit as patrolled" (i.e. does it mean (a) "the edit is correct", (b) "the edit isn't correct, but it's not obvious vandalism or spam", (c) something else)? (WT-en) JYolkowski 17:56, 17 November 2008 (EST)

It's showing up for 90 % of the edits on Recent Changes and this neva happened! Keep smiling ,(WT-en) edmontonenthusiast [ee] ^.T.A.L.K. 17:58, 17 November 2008 (EST).

Project:Recent_changes_patrol - note "registered for over 30 days". (WT-en) Dguillaime 18:27, 17 November 2008 (EST)

That's not true, I patrol over so often, it's just the frequency of edits are so massive it's impossible to keep up, with so few chipping in the work. On that note I actually have a question - Is it possible to mark all revisions up to I read through an article as patrolled - would be useful when a user does like 20 edits on page within a short span of time - it's get tiresome to mark every single edit as patrolled. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 20:48, 18 November 2008 (EST)

Yes, if you enable "enhanced recent changes" in your preferences, that will group edits by page, and you can mark as patrolled from the grouped "dif". --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:53, 18 November 2008 (EST)

Thanks! I find the enchanted version a bit confusing and poorly designed, but maybe I should let it stay for a while and see if I can get used to it. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 21:04, 18 November 2008 (EST)

Wikivoyage language tags

It would save patrollers a lot of time if users adding a language version tag to an article marked it as minor edit, did so from a user account and not anonymously and marked it as patrolled immediately (assuming they have been around longer than 30 days). The pl tag has been an especially big culprit lately.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 06:42, 27 December 2009 (EST)

Yeah... Unfortunately, this user has not responded to requests to create an account, or really to any communication. He does a ton of good work on the Polish version, but I actually wish he would stop adding interlang tags to the English version. Our interlang-bots could do it without cluttering recentchanges. I'll try contacting him again... --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:21, 27 December 2009 (EST)

Autoconfirmation

Swept in from the pub

How long until a user is autoconfirmed? I'm getting tired of patrolling SnappyHip's edits when it's obvious SnappyHip is doing good work. (WT-en) LtPowers 10:28, 4 February 2010 (EST)

I thought it was 500 edits? I may be wrong though. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 10:33, 4 February 2010 (EST)

30 days from registration. (WT-en) Andyfarrell 10:47, 4 February 2010 (EST)

Patrolling

swept from pub:

The last time the proportion of patrolled edits was this high was probably about a little over two years ago, and this is hugely helpful to avoid duplicating effort and generally keeping the site clean. A big thanks to those putting in the effort to hit that "marked as patrolled" button. Looks like a lot of effort in particular on the parts of Burmesedays, Inas, and Sertmann—thanks! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:20, 9 December 2009 (EST)

Stefan pointed out to me a few weeks ago that "marking as patrolled" really does save time for other patrollers and since then I have been trying to do that as often as possible. And, it is just nice seeing a screen of 500 recent changes with very little red on it. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 02:23, 11 December 2009 (EST)

I think too many (especially long time admins) has become a bit to cocky on this task, I myself thought I was able to sniff out the bad ones on the recent changes page, but as it turns out when I've made a concious effort to go through everything - this is clearly not the case.

For years we have let too much slip by, and the consequences are rather dire if you ask me. Once a few "listing name - listing url" listings have slipped by the nets, new edits tend to imitate what's already there, increasing the burden, and decreasing the value of WT - and it's getting really widespread.

So I'd really encourage some more thorough patrolling from everyone, with me and Burmesedays doing a great effort already, it's really not that much extra effort checking everything when you're doing the rounds anyway. I just open the page, and hold ctrl down on all the red exclamation marks I see to open them all into new tabs, and go through them methodologically - if just two more people starting doing this (near) daily, patrolling everything would be a breeze, especially if it was one from the American time zone with Asia and Europe covered already. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 20:58, 28 December 2009 (EST)

A hearty hear-hear to all of that. The only thing I would add to Stefan's comments is to ask that more users (administrators especially) specifically mark edits as patrolled. I do waste a lot of time looking at changes which have already been patrolled but not marked as such.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:10, 28 December 2009 (EST)

Well, since we have renewed interest in actually trying to patrol our recent changes, I'll re-float this idea for a collective-action promoting expedition. I'd be happy to sign up for 4 hours out of the day—it's just 10 minutes. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:49, 29 December 2009 (EST)

It is clear that in the past 24 hours more users have been marking edits as patrolled. Well done! --(WT-en) Burmesedays 19:55, 29 December 2009 (EST)

As I start to patrol I notice how badly written many contributions are. Can we suggest for new pages that people consider working first in Word (cutting and pasting the template), using the grammar and spelling checker of Word to improve their contributions, and then pasting back into Wikivoyage? (WT-en) Shep 01:49, 2 January 2010 (EST)

I would rather suggest using Firefox, which has a built-in spell checker. Word doesn't always copy+paste well to/from non-Office applications. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:33, 2 January 2010 (EST)

I cant seam to git it to work on my computer even though I have enabled the boxxes to check the speeling. Anyway, I am hopefully not the problem but there are an awful lot of new entries with bad English and I was thinking that we could give them some useful advice on quality control rather than just say "download the template and start typing" (WT-en) Shep 02:23, 3 January 2010 (EST)

I think Word is the best option for what Shep is trying to achieve. It does handle some formatting and characters rather poorly, but that is far outweighed by the fact that it lives on more PCs in the world than Firefox. A few words encouraging the use of a spell-checker would certainly not go amiss.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:38, 4 January 2010 (EST)

Word has a nasty tendency to convert quotation marks, dashes, apostrophes, and occasionally other characters into Microsoft-specific variants, so just be careful when using it as an editor. While these conversions won't break articles, they won't display consistently across all browsers. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:41, 4 January 2010 (EST)

They also tend to screw with re-use when converting to other formats—better to recommend Firefox or a decent text editor, if anything at all. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:19, 4 January 2010 (EST)

It may just be contributors who speak poor English as a second language. While we certainly want nicely written articles, we shouldn't be prude to contributors who add useful information. Just like new contributors aren't condemned for violating the MoS, should we extend similar courtesy to non-native English speakers? If you were contributing to a WT version in a language which you understand but don't have a good handle on, would you like them pointing out all your mistakes and leading you to a web browser or to Word to correct them? As far as Word goes, if we assume that these are people who don't speak English fluently, then they probably would be using Word in a different language and does Word spell check in other languages(in this case, English)? Just a couple of thoughts...(WT-en) AHeneen 02:12, 5 January 2010 (EST)

Word will spellcheck any language you want it to, as long as you have the right dictionary installed. I don't know which dictionaries are installed by default on foreign copies of the product. (WT-en) LtPowers 08:41, 5 January 2010 (EST)

Quick question on Patrolling... If, as I have just done, I Undo a change for some reason, the original edit remains Unpatrolled. Given the edit has now been undone, should the original edit be marked as Patrolled since it no longer needs rolling back, or should it be left in an Unpatrolled state? (WT-en) Nrms 08:27, 8 February 2010 (EST)

The purpose of patrolling is to alert other patrollers that an edit has been examined and appropriate action taken. If you've undone an edit, other patrollers need not look at it, so you should mark it as patrolled. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:00, 8 February 2010 (EST)

Cheers! Will make a note to patrol those edits in future then. (WT-en) Nrms 09:03, 8 February 2010 (EST)

I have been doing a lot a patrolling the last few months and can see that others do the same, which is great. However, I have also noticed that edits being left unpatrolled for half a day or something are not given much focus by others and tend to remain unpatrolled. Therefore, I have been patrolling otherwise unpatrolled edits ½-2 days after the edits are made, and I find quite a lot of vandalism and other edits needing to be reverted or changed. I do not mind continuing to do this second round patrolling but would like some help from others, (WT-en) ClausHansen 06:38, 19 March 2010 (EDT)

Good point Claus and I will try to focus a bit on those as well. The key problem is that we have way too few patrollers. Losing Stefan (I dearly hope not permanently) has not helped. It would be great if a few more regulars could at least find 15 minutes here and there to patrol.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 06:52, 19 March 2010 (EDT)

The upside is that I think we're doing a better job of this recently than any other time save when we first had the feature implemented! Clicking "hide patrolled edits" in recentchanges will show the edits from previous days that went unpatrolled, many of which are harder cases than most. I know I personally will see the occasional difficult-to-deal-with edit that makes my heart sink, and I leave it for someone else who can find that motivation ;) I will try to respond in kind, though. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:27, 21 March 2010 (EDT)

Edits made via ITravel

First, it's great that Wikivoyage is editable via ITravel application. Anyway, as far as I can see, all edits made via this application appear as made by User:(WT-en) ITravel, which is an account (?) older than 30 days and thus all edits appear automatically patrolled at Special:Recentchanges, while in fact they may be made by a first time contributor to Wikivoyage if I understood the situation correctly. Edit summaries are self-explanatory enough, but I'd like to make sure no edits get missed by an absence of a red exclamation mark on busier days. So, is it technically possible to alter settings for User:ITravel so that edits made via ITravel never become automatically patrolled? – (WT-en) Vidimian 09:56, 3 October 2010 (EDT)

Patrolling

Swept in from the pub

I see good patrolling from various contributors, but lots of edits get through without being patrolled. For some parts of 2010, I made sure that everything was patrolled, but stopped as the work load was too much. As I see it, we really need to do something to prevent our content from degenerating. If we were seven people who would take the responsibility to take one week day each, we could make sure that everything was patrolled. I am happy to do one day a week, so now we only need six more, --(WT-en) ClausHansen 21:28, 24 April 2011 (EDT)

It is a vital task at Wikivoyage and one which can be a bit soul-destroying if it is not shared. Claus is one contributor who has done sterling work on this front for a long time. I hope to be able to help again and put myself forward as one of the seven.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 22:47, 24 April 2011 (EDT)

@Claus/Burmesedays: Great to see both ofyou back at WT, work overload was pretty bad here in the last months. I will be very busy during for the next months to finish a project by July. Therefore i can only offer irregular patrolling like in the past. I focus now mostly to maintain my favourite articles and the DoTM/OtbP as they are in desperate need of articles. I think its a good idea and we should start a table at the project Home to encourage other admins/users to join you. Best regards, (WT-en) jan 14:02, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

If the daily patroller thing works then I'm very supportive, but I'm a bit hesitant to sign up for something that sounds disturbingly like a job - Wikivoyage is a great escape for me, and I try to patrol as time allots, but I'm hesitant to sign up for a task that turns an escape into a chore... are there perhaps any other thoughts about how we could encourage more people to patrol without assigning shifts? Would a statistics page that captured "top patrollers", some sort of barnstar (10,000 pages patrolled, etc) or something similar do anything to encourage more people to join in? Statistics would be fairly easy to generate from Special:Logs. Just a thought, and many thanks to those who have been patrolling in obscurity. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 23:08, 25 April 2011 (EDT)

Statistics could be a good idea, see one [5] that I made for 2010Q1, --(WT-en) ClausHansen 03:55, 26 April 2011 (EDT)

I am with (WT-en) Ryan on this, I sometimes spend a lot of time patrolling but I would be loath to make a commitment to do it to a quota or roster based system lest I lapsed and did not fulfill the undertaking. I don't know about others but my own style and approach toward patrolling varies considerably from day to day and even during an editing or patrolling session. Sometimes I just look over the recent edit and either mark as patrolled and move on or make any basic corrective adjustments that may appear to be required. Other times I may dwell on the wider scope of the section or the entire article and do a wider review of other recent edits or sweep through the section or entire article copy-editing or reviewing listings or article page formatting. That is often a potentially very time consuming task and would result in quite spotty performance in terms of a daily clearance volume. I assume others are the same and have a mixed style and approach toward this task. To regiment it into a volume driven or performance oriented task may not be that good a thing to do. If patrollers felt they had a quota to fulfill it may rob the articles of other essential input incidental to the patrolling. The other problem is that I am sure that many of us have specific areas of knowledge and some specific articles that we take greater individual interest in. I normally pay attention to these first and then do a general look around if I still have time. Some articles I do not feel comfortable with if I do not have sufficient knowledge of the location so I can only reasonably deal with policy or formatting issues unless it is just a simple correction of some obvious and outstanding editing absurdity. I worry that a volume based approach may rob the activity of the required focus, prior edit investigations and User activity enquiries that are often required to work out what is going on in some articles. Then again of course setting up such a system does not mean we all have to follow it. Maybe it will suit some better than others. Certainly there is quite a volume of stuff that simply gets missed. --- (WT-en) felix 07:08, 26 April 2011 (EDT)

I agree with Felix's points. For the record, my life is way too complicated and busy for me to make any kind of commitment. This is volunteer work, whereas there are other things in my life that simply must be done. So there could be weeks when I don't log on even once. But I salute anyone who may be able and willing to make specific commitments. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 17:34, 26 April 2011 (EDT)

As an aside, the number of un-patrolled edits [6] is very, very low at the moment. A hearty well done to all who have worked so hard on this.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 10:06, 10 June 2011 (EDT)

On another aside note, this [7] (i.e., choosing the day limit as "30", as opposed to "7", which seems to be default) will provide a larger number of unpatrolled edits. – (WT-en) Vidimian 12:23, 10 June 2011 (EDT)

Indeed, but the number is still very low.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 22:24, 10 June 2011 (EDT)

Sure, no disagreement on that. :-) – (WT-en) Vidimian 07:10, 11 June 2011 (EDT)

Patrolling

Swept from the pub:

Is there any particular reason why I for the life of me, can't figure out how to mark an edit as patrolled? Sertmann (talk) 20:20, 9 October 2012 (CEST)

Patrolling links appear when you view a diff, both at the top underneath the username, or at the very bottom. For new pages that have not been patrolled, there's a link at the bottom of the page to patrol them. Do you see unpatrolled edits marked in your watchlist and on Special:NewPages? LtPowers (talk) 21:21, 9 October 2012 (CEST)

@Powers: That is only true for single edits. If i click e.g. in the RecentChanges on Magdeburg, where User Pedelecs did three edits then the [Mark as patrolled] is not visible. I noted it a while ago but work to put it on the cleanup/bug list. Do you see the same pattern? Jc8136 (talk) 21:27, 9 October 2012 (CEST)

Yes, but I normally view diffs one edit at a time, so I hadn't really noticed. Is that different than the behavior on WT? LtPowers (talk) 21:45, 9 October 2012 (CEST)

We were able to patrol several edits at WT, as long as the bracket (xyz changes) was in RecentChanges visible. This was very helpful for high contributing new users that added loads of good content. Would be great if we could enable it at WV as well. Jc8136 (talk) 21:49, 9 October 2012 (CEST)

Yeah, I use the enchanted recent changes, and not being able to click patrolled on multiple edits is counter productive, I used that function all the time on WT. Sertmann (talk) 08:21, 10 October 2012 (CEST)

We recovered this functionality on WT post-upgrade [8]. --Peter ^Talk 15:10, 10 October 2012 (CEST)

I tested using my usual method — go to recent changes, click on diff for an unpatrolled edit. It worked fine for me. Pashley (talk) 04:35, 11 October 2012 (CEST)

Yes, it works fine for single diffs, but not for diffs grouped using enhanced recentchanges. --Peter ^Talk 05:09, 11 October 2012 (CEST)

As I know there is no mechanism or no longer for automatically marking a whole sequence of edits as patrolled. Normally each individual edit must be patrolled separately. I will look for this within the next days. Maybe I will find a solution. --Unger (talk) 16:38, 11 October 2012 (CEST)

Unger, it would be very kind if you could do it. With the increasing edit rate it will be a very helpful tool. Please let me/us know if we can assist. Jc8136 (talk) 16:42, 11 October 2012 (CEST)

Enabling Twinkle

What is the chance we're going to have access to something like Twinkle when we get to the WMF. Certainly would make patrolling a breeze. --Inas (talk) 01:34, 19 October 2012 (CEST)

There's some information about how to do so here. –sumone10154^(talk) 04:13, 19 October 2012 (CEST)

Do we have support for this? The lack of patrolling features in our current recent changes is a concern for me, given that we will leave Beta soon and will probably have a lot of edits by inexperienced users for about a month, following WMF announcements, the press release, and likely a good deal of blog posts and the occasional mainstream news article. --Peter ^Talk 17:47, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Bot flag

Swept from the pub:

Could an administrator please give User:MGA73bot the bot flag? I'm trying to patrol the recent changes, but it's quite difficult when the bot's making hundreds of edits, clogging the entire list. JamesA ^>talk 14:42, 3 November 2012 (CET)

Done, although on the user page, MGA73 claims to be making normal edits under that account as well. LtPowers (talk) 15:52, 3 November 2012 (CET)

Another workaround is, in the "Recent changes options" box at the top of that page, select Namespace: File and check the "Invert selection" box. May be necessary as regular users start tagging images for the migration as well. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 21:25, 3 November 2012 (CET)

Display diffs with the old yellow/green colors and design

Swept in from the pub

In Wikipedia I can go "My preferences", "Gadgets", and can tick "Display diffs with the old yellow/green colors and design". How can I do that in WV? thanks. Nurg (talk) 06:33, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

The Gadgets extension is enabled here, but it doesn't work because there are no gadgets set up here at the moment. You could use your personal CSS file (Special:MyPage/common.css) to achieve a similar goal, by copying the (ugly old) design located at w:MediaWiki:Gadget-OldDiff.css. This, that and the other (talk) 08:38, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you very much. Nurg (talk) 09:57, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Can't patrol multiple edits

I'm not seeing the "mark as patrolled" link now for multiple edits, only if I view each one individually - am I missing something? – cacahuate ^talk 08:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Nope, and yes, it's slowing me down, but no, I will patrol every last &#$%ing edit... OK, I'll have to throw in the Eastern Standard Time towel soon enough. I filed a request on Bugzilla earlier today, but I don't have high hopes of getting that fulfilled quickly—it will require custom coding. --Peter ^Talk 08:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

What a lame day for it to not be functioning!! – cacahuate ^talk 08:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not just today—being able to mark grouped edits as patrolled was a custom feature we had pre-Wikivoyage. --Peter ^Talk 08:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Real-Time Recent Changes

Real-Time Recent Changes looks quite useful, and we could enable it quickly—which is good, since our patrolling work volume has so skyrocketed. If others like the idea, please state so here, and I'll file a feature request on Bugzilla. --Peter ^Talk 21:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Wish it would provide a keyboard shortcut to "Mark as patrolled" and auto-load next diff after this one is done (not read thorougly on the latter; didn't find the former). --DenisYurkin (talk) 21:10, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

No need to request on bugzilla, I have added the gadget. –sumone10154^(talk) 21:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

This tool is pretty great. If we could get more of our admins using it, we'd be able to handle all the new contributions. --Peter ^Talk 02:09, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Documentation is at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krinkle/RTRC-docs. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

How does this work?

I seem to be missing something really basic. When I go to Recent Changes, I don't see any red exclamation marks ever. Is there something I need to turn on or install? Nurg (talk) 05:53, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Only admins can currently patrol recent changes. Hopefully, we'll be able to enable for non-admins soon (there's a discussion about how to do so at the Travellers' pub. –sumone10154^(talk) 06:01, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

The project page starts "Recent Changes Patrol is a utility for Wikivoyage users who have been registered for over 30 days"??? Nurg (talk) 06:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This page hasn't been changed since the move from Wikitravel->Wikivoyage. On the former site, all the information was true. However, the change in Mediawiki software (and default settings from WMF) means that this feature has been removed. The whole Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#Patrolling Redux section discusses this. AHeneen (talk) 06:08, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

So admins are marking recent changes as having been "patrolled" but I can't even just SEE that they have been "patrolled"?? Why is there any restriction on a purely informational function? I can understand there being a restriction on who can mark something as patrolled. Nurg (talk) 06:19, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. This was a very useful feature. AHeneen (talk) 06:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, would people please, pretty please just edit Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub#Patroller_user_group to say "yes, let's do this." Until that happens, we won't be able to get the patrol flags back on you guys without admin nominations, which will take weeks. --Peter ^Talk 06:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm in the Autopatrollers group which I gather means that I am trusted enough that my edits are automatically marked as patrolled. But I can't even see that my edits or anyone else's are patrolled. This seems so weird that I still feel there is something I misunderstand. Nurg (talk) 07:07, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

afaik, the only people that have ever been able to see the red exclamations are the people who are in the user group that is allowed to mark them as patrolled. At WT, we started with that being only admins, and then soon changed it so that auto-confirmed users could also see the marks and patrol edits. When we relaunched as WV under the WMF, for now it is back to admins patrolling; though per Peter's comments, we are discussing creating a whole new "patrollers" user group, so people could be elected to that (similar to the way that admins are elected), would then get patrolling and possibly rollback tools. Clearer? – cacahuate ^talk 07:17, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll put in the bugzilla request tomorrow regardless (unless someone else beats me to it tonight), but the process will speed up if more people give an unequivocal yes in the pub. --Peter ^Talk 09:19, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Patrolling Redux

Swept from the pub:

The recent changes patrol tells us that users who've been in action for over 30 days are automatically treated as patrolled. That doesn't seem to be happening. — Ravikiran (talk) 09:03, 25 October 2012 (CEST)

Yes you're right. --Saqib (talk) 09:20, 25 October 2012 (CEST)

It also would/will be good to add autopatrolled status to special:userrights options. --Peter ^Talk 06:17, 27 October 2012 (CEST)

You're the 'crat. Isn't that something you can do? Or will it take a developer? — Ravikiran (talk) 06:21, 27 October 2012 (CEST)

Bureaucrats can set the user rights, but determining which ones are available for bureaucrats to set appears to be a developer-side issue. LtPowers (talk) 19:17, 27 October 2012 (CEST)

LocalSettings.php contains the list of which user groups can do what. It's a text file on the server, so likely only a sysadmin or the site's owner would have access. K7L (talk) 03:22, 28 October 2012 (CET)

I have submitted a bug report requesting this feature be turned back on. Please do not sweep this discussion until it has been fulfilled (hopefully pre-launch). --Peter ^Talk 19:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Done The patrol feature for recent changes has been enabled! (gerrit:43624). Krinkle (talk) 19:41, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I think we are going to have patrolled edits re-enabled shortly, but only for admins at first. We need to decide between the following options per Krinkle:

• Either:
  • Set wgAutoConfirmAge to 30 days, and:
  • Grant autoconfirmed the "patrol" and "autopatrolled" right
• Or:
  • Create a "patroller" user group, grant it "patrol" and "autopatrolled".
  • Add "patroller" to list of groups sysops can grant
  • Wikivoyage admins can now give non-sysops the ability to help in patrol.
• Or:
  • Create a "patroller" user group, grant it "patrol" and "autopatrolled".
  • Create a new AutoPromote instance (besides "autoconfirmed") that is, unlike autoconfirmed, set to 30 days.

If I understand these correctly, Option 1 is what we had before: 30-day-old accounts are autopatrolled and can patrol edits. I think the ideal architecture for our needs would be to either stick with that, or to use option two: autopatrolled and patroller status are given by admins who notice that a contributor is doing good work. The advantage of #2 is that we can hold off on giving this status to older accounts that are not terribly trustworthy (and this would support us in our ongoing attempt to limit the use of blocks on our wiki), but the disadvantage is that it requires more work from the admins. Thoughts? --Peter ^Talk 19:45, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The other advantage of #2 that I'm realizing now as I look at recentchanges is that we'd be able to mark all the various accounts that are as of right now considered new, but we know from previous work to be trustworthy. The whole recentchanges is flagged right now! --Peter ^Talk 19:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I would also lean towards #2, but I'm not sure I understand #3. Would #3 automatically move any account that hasn't been specifically modified into the "autopatrolled" group after 30 days, but still give us the ability to remove the permission? That might be useful for reducing the amount of work required on account management while still giving us the ability to promote users early if they are doing good work, and rescind the autopatrolled flag for hotel marketers who have been around for more than 30 days. If that is indeed correct than #3 would be my preference. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:58, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Even if that's not what #3 is, it sounds doable to me, and I agree that it would be ideal. --Peter ^Talk 20:17, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

My preferred option is Ryan's #3. The amount of extra work for #2 concerns me. I guess either way, unless we do option #1, we'll need to come up with some guidelines for why someone would/wouldn't be autopatrolled after 30 days. -Shaundd (talk) 22:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree autopatrolled automatically after whatever time is considered appropriate, but with option for admin to remove if edits are problematic. (see Shaundd above) • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:25, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi again,

I just wanted to point out that option 1 would also affect something unrelated to patrolling. The other rights granted though "autoconfirmed" ^{(which ones)} will also be deferred to 30 days (as opposed to 4 days). Right now a user gets those rights after their 4th day. Changing autoconfirmed to 30 days means that, unrelated to this patrol workflow, they'll have to wait 30 days to be able to move pages, upload files, skip CAPTCHA etc. It may be undesirable to require 30 days to be "confirmed". It may be obvious, but I just wanted to point it out as a side-effect of going with option 1. Krinkle (talk) 20:09, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

So, can this be done? It doesn't seem that people older than 30 days are autopatrolled? --Inas (talk) 22:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

In that case, I think the ideal scenario for us would be option #3, but also add "patroller" to the list of groups that sysops can grant & remove. That way hotel marketers who have been around for 30+ days can have the patroller autopromote revoked, and busy new users who clearly know the ropes can be given the status much earlier, to reduce the workload on patrolling. Is that possible? Do others agree that this would be ideal? --Peter ^Talk 07:24, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Looks good to me. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

It would be nice to be able to patrol edits once again. Looking at the Recent changes, I review all the changes listed each time I refresh the page. It would be nice to know (not to mention more productive for those of us reviewing recent changes) which edits have been reviewed (patrolled) already by others. My choice is #3. If option 2 is chosen, please add me to the "patroller" user group. AHeneen (talk) 09:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I wish I could do that right now—I've been marking your edits as patrolled, which seems ridiculous, since I know full well you know what you are doing! Let's see if we can't speed this process up. I'll try tomorrow. --Peter ^Talk 09:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 43977

I can't patrol multiple edits at once anymore, as was possible before. Anyone has a clue how to turn this feature on again? Patrolling takes a lot longer this way. Globe-trotter (talk) 15:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed user rights

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 44015

Swept from the pub:

Would others support adding "confirmed user" to the list of user groups that admins can change? That would enable us (right away) to start flagging users who are trustworthy and experienced, so that their edits are automatically marked as patrolled. Please speak up, and I'll file the request. --Peter ^Talk 21:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• In light of what is already beginning to occur, this proposal has my strong support. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• Sure, but when will edits be able to be patrolled at all? Does something need to be checked in preferences (I don't see anything regarding patrolled edits)? AHeneen (talk) 21:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• For that, we need to sort out the above. --Peter ^Talk 21:37, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The confirmed group has exactly the same rights as autoconfirmed, so their edits aren't automatically marked as patrolled. See Special:listgrouprights. –sumone10154^(talk) 21:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support as I keep patrolling edits from trusted and competent users :) I would suggest that the usergroup be called 'autopatrolled' as it would be very clear that way what it is, and that it be granted liberally by admins to slim down the workload on patrolling. This would mean that all users on this group would have their edits autopatrolled. There's no 'autopatrolled' switch in the preferences. I suggest that if we get more comments here, we can file a bugzilla today and cut the work right away :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 21:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support to cut down on admin backlogs. Noting that this should be autopatrolled as confirmed means something else on other WMF wikis. --Rschen7754 22:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, I'll put in a request to create user group autopatrolled and add it to the list of groups that admins (not just bureaucrats) can change. --Peter ^Talk 22:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Request is at Bugzilla:44015. --Peter ^Talk 22:13, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Commented, I think we want it both assignable and removable by admins, right? Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 22:18, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. --Peter ^Talk 22:20, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

It is now live. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 23:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Done --Rogerhc (talk) 04:17, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Patroller user group

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 44048

Swept from the pub:

Let's try doing this piecemeal for now. Let's add a "patroller" user group, and adding it to the list of groups that bureaucrats can edit. Please comment to demonstrate support, or to make it clear that this would be a problem. --Peter ^Talk 22:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Why not just give the patrol ability to autopatrollers, instead of creating a separate group? –sumone10154^(talk) 23:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Autopatrollers are supposed to be given, imo, without even asking them or anything, it's a passive ability group. I would suggest that a patroller user group would be interesting and a good thing, but that a bit more thought is needed as to what permissions they might need. For example, if the objection of the patroller usergroup is to have non-admins patrol the recent changes for vandalism, it would be a good idea to give them the rollback ability as well :) At the moment only admins, stewards and global rollbackers have the real rollback button here :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 01:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be fine. All of this is a little rushed, of course, because we face such a patrolling challenge right now. I'd love to be able to flag 2-3 people who are already patrolling, but unable to interface with our patrolled edits functionality. But we'll need some statements of support for the idea here first. --Peter ^Talk 02:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I've spent several hours last night & today going through the recent changes to fix issues. However, each time I refresh the page, 50 new edits are shown (most by new users) and I'll go through most of them without knowing if another user (or two) has already looked at them. This seems like a waste of time/energy by WV users who are doing such work. It would be really nice to go to my watchlist or recent changes and see 10 of 50 haven't been reviewed and just check those edits. AHeneen (talk) 05:01, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I spent a couple of hours on recent changes too and, like AHeneen, found it very inefficient. I have now realised that others are able to do this work much more efficiently. So it seems like a very good idea if I can "patrol" (as I can at WT) and rollback (which I have long been able to do at WP). Nurg (talk) 06:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support combined patroller and rollback into one group. Seems like a good combination. --Rschen7754 06:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support patrol/rollback combo user group – cacahuate ^talk 06:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Question though: is this convo, buried deep in a subsection in the pub, the best place to discuss and gain consensus for this? It's actually a pretty big deal, adding a whole new user group – cacahuate ^talk 06:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support. I think this is a fine idea, for users who want to patrol but don't want other admin tools. I think that some of you might consider applying to be admins, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Comment: To cacahuate's point: Yes, this could easily get lost. I will link this section in "Requests for Comment." Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:13, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Is it possible to get this enabled for a trial run while still in discussion? That would demonstrate utility (or lack) at a time when it is most likely to be of value. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:22, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Basically everything is a trial run—we can always change to a different way of doing things if we decide to later. We still need to sort out autopromote instances as per above. We'll have to come up with a process for assigning patroller/rollbacker rights, although I fully intend to abuse power and hand out several as soon as we get them ;) --Peter ^Talk 09:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• I agree to the extent that I suggest enabling the combined patroller/rollback function as soon as possible, and starting a list of candidates immediately. I also support any admin handing out the user right to a user he/she trusts, with the proviso that it be withdrawn and subject to nomination and discussion for any person who gets a reasonably motivated objection from an admin. Objections from non-admin users should be also be discussed, but the rights need not be withdrawn without consensus. (objections from suspected vandals are to be expected, and must be given due consideration, but should not disrupt productive patrol activity). • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:20, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support. As per my comments above. Also putting my hand up for admin tools in general. Nurg (talk) 09:56, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• I agree combining patroller and rollbacker in one group is a good idea, but I wonder if this new usergroup is actually needed. Most of the people we would trust with this sort of tool are already admins. LtPowers (talk) 19:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

  I can think of at least one user that's been patrolling a lot today, User:Rschen7754. Savh would also do well with it, but he's already got global rollback :D Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 19:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

  • Users who do a lot of cross-wiki work but don't have enough of a record here might find it helpful, or people who do not want to be admins for whatever reason. --Rschen7754 19:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I hae submitted this to bugzilla: Bugzilla:44048. --Peter ^Talk 22:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This is now live! --Rschen7754 00:52, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

That's nice. Where does one volunteer for this bit, please? (a link, please) -- Alice^✉ 01:10, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Restricting patrolling to mainspace

Swept from the pub:

I think it would be wise to restrict the patrolling feature to mainspace, as that's were most of the vandalism lies, and vandalism outside of mainspace will be easily caught anyway. This would save us from patrolling people's own userpages and discussions on talk pages and user talk pages. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 13:22, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This is not possible in the software and also unlikely to be something you really want. Why would destroy the other information? Instead of restricting the entire system, simply use filters for your own workflow. To show a queue of unpatrolled edits in the Main namespace only, just hide the other namespaces for your eyes only by using the filter drop down menus that exist in the interface. For example this link ^(RTRC) will show you "all recent changes in the main namespace that are unpatrolled, not minor edits and not by you" (only autoconfirmed users can make mark edits as minor). Krinkle (talk) 01:58, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

New pages patrol

Swept in from the pub

It looks like we need to have anyone who has been on this site for a while take a look through special:newpages to check that all of these new pages follow the standard Wikivoyage format:

• Is the new page about a city, town or destination that meets what is an article?
• If so, does the place exist? Do we have an existing article which overlaps the new one?
• If not, is it adaptable as a travel topic / itinerary or should it be merged/redirected into its host city?
• Do the standard outline sections in {{smallcity}} (understand, get in, see, do, buy, eat, drink, sleep, go next) all exist (even if they're blank for now)?
• Is the parent region identified with {{isPartOf}} and named in the article's introduction?
• Is the parent region listed as specifically as possible (for instance, isPartOf:northern Scotland is more precise than isPartOf:Europe, as Europe is huge)? Does that region's city list link back to the new page?
• Is the page a reasonable outline from which to build a new article, or merely a one-line stub like "This town is a dump, don't go here"?
• Are listings formatted correctly - name, address, telephone numbers, official website, descriptions?
• Are telephone numbers in international format - for instance, +1 areacode NXX-XXXX for North America?
• Is the WP article (or commons: category) for this place linked in the sidebar as [[wikipedia: City, Region]] (and not pasted into a page as an external link to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City,_Region )?

We do seem to have many new articles about real places which should be in the guide, which is great. I've looked through a few and fixed what I can, but there is a huge backlog of new pages.

Many of these are outlines at best. Some might not be suitable (for instance, an article on every highway or every river would only duplicate info already in Wikipedia) but most need merely to be expanded (so that stubs become outlines and outlines are ready to be fleshed out as articles) and put into the standard format for a city or destination guide page.

At this point, it is important to review new pages so that new users can be aware of common errors to fix before they repeat the same mistakes on multiple articles (and have to edit them all later to fix things). Please give our newest users some feedback. :) K7L (talk) 04:03, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I've gone through all the new pages between 00:31, 17 January 2013 ‎Kentucky Bourbon Distilleries Tours 05:28, 17 January 2013 ‎Singaporeholidays and 16:31, 16 January 2013 ‎Branscombe. A handful (maybe 5) were OK. About 10 or so merge...so when the launch surge dies down, we'll need to go through all pages with the merge template. I didn't find any pages for a destination that already existed...most just needed ispartof, Wikipedia, & geo templates...no real issues with xl. I didn't bother with orphan pages..city lists for regions are limited to 9, so in many cases it couldn't be listed on region page & going to other pages to create links would consume a lot of time. Same with listings...as long as some content is there and no major problems (eg.spam)...ok...too time-consuming to turn a paragraph of prose into listings and add phone/link/address if missing.AHeneen (talk) 09:31, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Patrolling problem

Swept in from the pub

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 8697

Hi, everyone. I have set my preferences so that if there are several recent edits of an article, it shows up on "Recent changes" as having, say 4 edits. However, I don't seem to be able to mark several edits at once as having been patrolled. Is anyone else having the same problem, and if so, I hope something can be done about it. Patrolling edits individually when there may be, say, 12 recent edits of an article is really untenable, as traffic increases here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:15, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

No one can do that, and it's really frustrating to say the least. I think this feature request was filed at Bugzilla somewhere, but I can't find where. Patrolling would be a lot easier if we got that feature back. Globe-trotter (talk) 04:54, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia has the patrol system that you describe, so it is possible. I'm a bit annoyed by it too - that's how Wikidata is set up as well for some reason (the third project I'm a part of). --Rschen7754 05:00, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

If English Wikipedia has that setup, what's the issue in getting it here? We used to have that on Wikitravel, and it's desperately needed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

It's a huge problem, and has crippled our ability to effectively patrol. Please see Bugzilla:43977, and vote for its importance, if you think this deserves more attention. --Peter ^Talk 09:09, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, enwiki only does this for entirely new pages, so it's not exactly like that (sorry for the false alarm! trying to keep all these projects straight :/) But yes this would be quite useful. --Rschen7754 09:31, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there any way to hide my email address on Bugzilla? I'm not at all comfortable with having my email address be public. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately not that I'm aware. I use a separate email for all my WMF accounts and mailing list subscriptions to guard against outing, and it's possible to change the email on your Bugzilla account. --Rschen7754 10:18, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

You can change the email address on https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=account and the email address is only shown to users that are logged in. Related bug report: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148 - --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Patroller group

Swept in from the pub

So the patroller group's been created, but there aren't any users in it.... is this something we still want to use? --Rschen7754 02:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. It could be used as an intermediate status group between "autopatrolled" and "admin", for example when protecting pages from editing such as Template talk:Listing#Protection -- Alice^✉ 03:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This isn't possible; the only options when protecting a page are semi-protection (allow autoconfirmed edits) and full protection (allow admin edits). –sumone10154^(talk) 05:18, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I supported and still support the idea of a patroller group, but how would we recruit or nominate people to do this work? I have some names in mind. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:14, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought I asked the same question here: Wikivoyage_talk:Recent_changes_patrol#Patroller_user_group but can not trace receiving an answer.

Sumone10154: Thanks for the quick (if disappointing) response. -- Alice^✉ 07:46, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

We requested this group to be formed when we had a strong need for it (during the launch), but didn't get it implemented until the launch was over. In the meantime, we coped in part by promoting a lot of new admins. So the outcome is that right now we have an extremely high ratio of (active!) admins to casual editors, and there isn't really a whole lot of need for the patroller group. Possibly at some point, when casual edits take up more space in recentchanges, we might want to consider using this (they are precious few now), but for now I don't see it as being particularly useful. --Peter ^Talk 09:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

So dumb question, but can autopatrolled editors do recent changes patrol, or is that functionality currently limited to admins and the patroller group? If only admins can patrol, I'd be in favor of doing the same thing as we're doing with "autopatroller" now and simply let admins, at their discretion, change group settings for non-admins who would benefit from the group change; the more patrollers we have the better. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Per Special:ListGroupRights, autopatrollers can't mark as patrolled (they're just autopatrolled), while patrollers have both mark as patrolled and rollback. --Peter ^Talk 18:22, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I would support that, but we would need another bugzilla request to allow admins to add and remove patroller; only bureaucrats can do that right now. --Rschen7754 21:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

That explains why I can't just patrol in the RC list anymore, since the move :-) I was meaning to ask about it. What's the reason why RC patrol has been limited? Frankly, I would say we should make patrolling as open as possible, in order to get as many people to help as we can. Especially if we want to grow. It seems very silly that admins (who belong to the most useful editors also!) have to do patrolling on their own, thus leaving less and less time for editing. JuliasTravels (talk) 18:48, 28 February 2013 (UTC) User:Justme on WT

Agreed, I would support allowing admins to give the patroller right. It also might be a good idea to create a Requests for permissions page. –sumone10154^(talk) 06:02, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage active users (screenshot taken 26 February 2013)

How do I join the ranks of the "autopatrollers" as listed in the accompanying screenshot, please ? -- Alice^✉ 00:42, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

BUMP: Does nobody know the answer? -- Alice^✉ 18:32, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Special:Log/rights. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I have added a note to Wikivoyage:Autopatrollers clarifying that the status gives you no extra tools, and has no effect on your editing. As such, requests for autopatroller status raise red flags in my view. --Peter ^Talk 20:14, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Editing articles about Africa

Swept in from the pub

The good news is that we've been getting a lot more edits to articles about Africa lately. The bad news is that the edits are by an IP user with a changing IP who doesn't pay attention to attempts to communicate via his/her user talk pages or edit summaries, and the edits typically look like this - starting sentences with lowercase letters, sometimes arbitrarily starting words elsewhere in sentences (like "Train") with capital letters, etc. These are very easily preventable errors, but this IP user is editing the way s/he wants to. I'm willing to do my part, I've long since become too frustrated to constantly clean up all of these kinds of errors, but we shouldn't leave articles like this. I think the content is helpful, so by no means do I consider this a Telstra vandal situation, and I don't want any impediments put in this user's way, but the rest of us need to collaborate in cleaning up his/her capitalization and grammar mistakes.

Do I have any volunteers to help follow edits to articles about places in Africa and clean up as needed after them? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:57, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

This may not be an opinion that is broadly shared, but particularly if you're becoming frustrated I'd suggest that it might be best to accept that not every edit will be patrolled, and that on a wiki it's OK to leave minor issues for the next person to clean up. It would be great if every edit could be patrolled and corrections applied immediately, but for my part I found that editing here is a much more pleasant experience if I'm willing to accept the fact that some edits may introduce minor issues that persist for a while, and that's OK. I still spot-check unpatrolled changes, and will dig deeper if I see a pattern of editing that I'm concerned about, but I wasn't having fun when the majority of my contributions were reviews of unpatrolled changes, and am enjoying contributing much more now that I've stopped doing so.

I'm not suggesting you stop patrolling recent changes - you are an incredible asset to the site for the work you do - but that it might be more fun for you to contribute if you reduced the workload somewhat to reduce your frustration.

On a related note, if we can identify certain patterns that require correction it might be possible to develop bots to fix things automatically, thus reducing the workload on patrollers, or if anyone is willing to investigate it might be possible to get bots from Wikipedia to run here. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:29, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

A bot would be wonderful.

One of the things I enjoy doing and do aside from patrolling is to look at the Commons Picture of the day and new Valued images on Commons each day and input thumbnails that seem appropriate into Wikivoyage articles. Last night, I also started looking at the larger repository of Featured images. That's a vast, vast task, as there are so many, so I'll probably only do a few a day now and then, and not all of them need to be put into Wikivoyage articles, but it's nice when they belong, and sometimes, surprising images like one of a chapel below a starry sky including the Milky Way can be used to illustrate an area. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:07, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Patrolling

Swept in from the pub

I am an autopatroller but I have never seen the patrol option on any edits in Recent changes. Please advise. Thanks, Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 00:30, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I've set the "patroller" flag on your account - see if that makes a difference. WV:Recent changes patrol may be out of date - I'm not sure what our guidelines are for assigning patroller rights. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:33, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Wrh2: Thanks! I didn't realise they were different groups on this wiki. --Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 00:35, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I've never heard that there was a separate "patroller" status. Is there a way to enable any autopatroller to patrol recent changes if s/he so desires? I don't think all our other recent changes patrollers are admins, and I certainly hope not! Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:00, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

"Autopatroller" is a misnomer; it should really be "autopatrolled"; edits by these users don't need to be marked as patrolled. "Patroller", on the other hand, is a trusted status that allows patrolling (AND rollback, it should be pointed out). At the time we created the Patroller role, we had an influx of edits from Wikipedians and needed a lot of patrollers. By the time we got it implemented, though, the rush had died down and admins were able to keep up with the workload. We never created a process for granting the Patroller role. Historically, any user we trusted enough to grant Patroller rights we usually just nominated for Administrator. Powers ^(talk) 18:44, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

OK, you've jogged my memory on this, but I didn't think this was ever implemented. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:14, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

If that is still not changed, it means that active and highly trusted users like User:Ypsilon or User:Hobbitschuster (who have not been nominated as administrators yet, by their choice) still do not have patroller rights. If that's indeed the case, I suggest we set the patroller flag for them and any other users like them, regardless of whether they ask for it or not. If they choose to never make any use of it, that's fine too, but they should be able to. JuliasTravels (talk) 20:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Based on the fact that many of us (myself included) were under the impression that longtime contributions already had appropriate permissions to patrol recent changes I've updated the two accounts mentioned - hopefully that isn't controversial. I don't know if non-bureaucrats can update this permission, but if not let me know if anyone else should have permissions updated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:54, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Well thanks. I had had the privilege of seeing red exclamation marks on another wiki previously (before you ask, I currently don't edit there for political reasons that have no place on this wiki). I am not sure I will make use of being able to scan them, but I don't think it can do me or the wiki much harm... Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:29, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

[unindent] Just to clarify: Is the only major difference between Patrollers and Admins that Patrollers cannot block any user? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:40, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

No. Special:ListGroupRights shows the permissions each group has. Patrollers have the 'patrol' and 'rollback' rights (they should probably also have 'autopatrol', though in practice it's unlikely we'd grant the Patroller role to anyone who hadn't already been granted Autopatroller). Admins have many more: in addition to the various blocking-related rights, admins can also change page protection, adjust the edit filters, create user accounts, delete and hide page revisions (and view deleted/hidden revisions), delete pages (and view deleted pages), edit the user interface, merge page histories, override blacklists, assign the Autopatroller role, and many more rather obscure privileges. Powers ^(talk) 03:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I had forgotten about a lot of these. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:28, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The rollback thing seems to be for undoing edits by registered users and not IPs. Wouldn't it be more logical the other way around (as IPs are more likely to be vandals)? It's also just one click away so you can accidentally hit it if you're looking at Recent changes while editing on a tablet. Is there a way to hide the function? ϒpsilon (talk) 11:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Rollback is for IPs, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:34, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

That is, unless there's something weird about how rollbacks are set up for Patrollers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:37, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

At least earlier today the IP edits didn't have the rollback option while edits by you and me for example were rollable. Now here's me as an IP, let's see how it looks like in the recent changes after logging in. 83.245.230.27 13:49, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Now it's there. Possibly the option disappears if someone who's registered has been editing the page/even looked at it afterwards. Dunno. ϒpsilon (talk) 13:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

[unindent]Should we have a thread at Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations or somewhere else to nominate some of our favorite contributors for Patroller status? Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:40, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think a formal nomination is required, but since it does not appear that non-bureaucrats can assign patroller rights then a list of users who should be given that permission would be useful to let LtPowers and I know when to update user rights. We might want to request that admins be given the right to assign patroller permissions so that we can handle it like we do with autopatroller and just give it to anyone who seems trustworthy. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:21, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

That would be good. I would suggest for everyone to apply a higher level of trust for Patroller than Autopatroller status, essentially giving it to anyone who you would nominate for Admin but who prefers not to be one or was not approved for Admin simply because of a lack of much participation in policy discussions and the like. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

My only concern would be that adding the patrolling links and flags might be found to be distracting by some users with no interest in patrolling. Powers ^(talk) 21:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

In which case, it would be good to ask each person whether they'd like that status. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Rethinking "Recent Changes Patrol"

Swept in from the pub

I've had several conversations with new or relatively new users who were more or less freaked out by "stalking" — that is, reading their changes in Special:RecentChanges and making small edits to their work and/or preexisting text in the article(s) they've just been editing. Some have reacted very negatively to this, and we may even have lost some editors permanently over this. I'm not talking about spambots, touters or vandals but good-faith editors who may be a bit sensitive and perhaps quickly frustrated, especially if some of the edits after them are in some way wrong (as is bound to happen at times, given that all editors are human).

So here's the problem: Given that "out of sight is out of mind" and that many small and not-so-small faults in articles have escaped the notice of editors for years, it's very tempting to fix them when "Recent changes" brings them to our attention. The risk if we wait some set period of time before attending to them is that we will get distracted and never go back to those articles. So what to do? Should we risk leaving minor to moderate faults alone, with the possible attendant erosion of the site's quality considered to be a reasonable risk, given the improvements to content from new editors? Or is there even a single, one-size-fits-all answer to this question? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:14, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

This is not an easy topic. Is part of the nature of a Wiki collaborative site. Also with Wikivoyage consisting of a small active group of regular contributor, it can be a bit intimidating for a new user that maybe more use to blog type web pages than wiki style authoring. I think it is fine to make minor corrections to entries of new users but as for content topics it is always worth talking over entries first with the new user. For more established users I do not think we need to be so cautious (I notice that at least half of edits I make to a long ignored page are followed quickly by other edits), we are more used to this, sometimes harsh, collaborative environment.

On recent cases I know I swooped on a couple of new pages, but in my defence I have worked for some time to get every UK and Germany city page with at least one See and one Sleep on them. If I see a new page in these regions without such listing I feel a need to add an entry. As for other edits I am not totally in agreement with I try and start a conversation first and make edits once the page edits have settled down.

For those long term contributors maybe instead of concentrating on recent edits how about working on the to-dos of a Geographic Expedition or one of the Maintenance categories. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:18, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

The short answer to your question is that in any wiki, the content is always more important than preserving the contributors' feelings. Wikipedia is especially explicit about where they stand on the matter - w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia does not need you, w:Wikipedia:You are not irreplaceable, and so on - and, while I've always felt their bluntness to be unnecessarily harsh, in the end that's how it has to be for Wikivoyage too.

However, there are ways to do it more tactfully. For instance, when I find myself "stalking" a new editor on Recent Changes patrol, I usually drop him or her a welcome message on their talk page - not just the standard boilerplate text in Template:Welcome, but something more personalized, such as "Thank you for your contributions on (insert article here). I had to tweak it a little bit because of (insert reason here), but overall you're doing good work, keep it up!" 99% of the time, the message is received positively, and I can mark the whole thing down as a success at both 1) introducing a new user to the collaborative, give-and-take nature of editing Wikivoyage and 2) making him or her feel like a valued contributor to the site. And for that small minority of users who are so thin-skinned that even a friendly explanation like that can't make up for the indignity of being cleaned up after, then as far as I'm concerned we can absolutely throw up our hands and say maybe editing wikis isn't their thing.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 07:33, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, guys. We shouldn't lose sight of the issue that Wikipedia has lots of editors and that Wikipedia articles are not supposed to include original research, but we rely on a relatively small number of content-providers who personally know things. So maybe we need to be more careful to try to avoid repelling them and effectively chasing them from the site.

One issue is that some of the changes I like to make are not huge and policy-driven in a major way but have to do with things like capitalization, punctuation, syntax and usage, and some users who are in the process of making edits get annoyed by those. But there's no clear way for me to know when they are pausing or finished with editing a particular article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

As a new contributor myself (and somebody who has felt stalked) a few initial thoughts (sorry for the length of my response):

• My impression is that there are a fair number of destination pages that "require work" and that if contributors have time to do work, maybe focus on the bigger issues rather than spending time moving a colon or changing a double space to a single space. It is the out-of-date listings, major omissions, etc. (the "biggies") the "erode the quality" more than the minor niceties. By analogy, when you want a beautiful garden but only have 1 hour a day to work on it, do you spend every hour going over the flower beds somebody else has just weeded or do you spend your limited resource addressing the totally overgrown areas ...

• When considering leaping on a "Recent Changes" maybe there should be a distinction between adding new or additional content and tweaking phraseology. Distinguish between proof correcting a "work in progress" and a (mostly) complete addition or update (I guess I am not alone in "publishing" a page before I have finished changes.

• When focusing on "Recent Changes" to make corrections it would seem to erode the quality when the original author (who has local knowledge or done research) has their true and accurate contribution modified to be untrue or have errors all because a subsequent editor wanted it phrased differently.

• I am unaware of technical implementation details and appreciate that changes can require significant effort (and maybe such a process already exists) but one thought might be a modification to the page status (e.g. outline city tag thingy) where a page can be scheduled for review. Maybe a new page (in the template) defaults to "reviewin:2 weeks" and maybe longer established pages default to "reviewin:1 year". I would guess aspects to WikiVoyage subject coverage are more prone to change or that change happens outside the authors control than would be the case in Wikipedia. For example, restaurants/hotels/etc. open and close, transport services change, etc. affecting WikiVoyage whereas maybe other Wikis the initiator of the change is also a contributor (or has interest in having the Wiki updated). So longer term editors would then focus more on the "Scheduled for Review" lists rather than "Recent Changes". (Any page provided to a user might then also include a warning box "This page is overdue for review", similar to the "outlinecity" info box)

• Maybe WikiVoyage needs a different type of contributor from other Wikis. Many years ago I used to contribute to the South American Handbook and such resources need a large number of non-specialists updating and maintaining information rather than specialists in specific fields. As people travel they find useful information and maybe errors of changes in e.g. WikiVoyage and provide additions or updates.

• Of course with any new contributor it needs to be remembered that they only see "where things are" rather than the reasons as to why things got there. But, as I'm new and unknown, I should add that I firmly believe that any idea (however good or bad) can be improved through discussion and input from others. PsamatheM (talk) 09:17, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Very much agreed on the value of discussion. Thanks for giving us some things to think about. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:28, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion: It is tempting to quickly edit a recent change as "out of sight is out of mind" tends to happen after a few days. We did look at an articles needing attention {{Needsimprovement}} tag a while ago but I think this is a too loud a solution in the cases we are currently discussing. I suggest that people create a folder in the Bookmark function of their web browser, something like "Wikivoyage - articles to revisit". Bookmark the recent change you think needs some attention but leave it a week before going back to it, making any changes and removing from your bookmark list. --Traveler100 (talk) 09:30, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Good idea. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:40, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

When I first started as an IP editor way back when, I found that my edits would "bring back" long forgotten articles to the attention of more established users. I must say I was actually delighted by that and didn't feel stalked (though I guess I had at least a hunch what recent change patrol might entail). It's also a thing that edits by "not established" editors are marked with a small red exclamation point that "more established" editors can remove if they find the edit free of spam or egregious abuse of the English language (sadly quite common here) - it is of course tempting to not only get rid of the exclamation point but fix whichever minor faults one stumbles across. But yeah, I feel we overwhelmed - for example - the person who created Villingen-Schwenningen Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:15, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

In Wikipedia, this problem is handled by putting new articles in the "draft" namespace. Before an article is moved to the main namespace, it must be reviewed by several editors. --FriedhelmW (talk) 16:50, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't thatscare away even more newbies even quicker? I always find that WP is way to quick with the "revert on sight" - it's rather hard to get any thing - even a true or plausible thing - to "stick" in WP. This is and should be different here. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I would take any suggestion to encourage new users very seriously, and it is probably accurate to say that you need a thick skin if a seasoned editor starts aggressively jumping on an article you are working on. That said, surely that is how a Wiki works? If anyone doesn't want someone to edit at the same time then they can always create their content in a sandbox int heir namespace and no-one will touch... Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:54, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, but most new users wouldn't know about the sandbox! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:29, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I didn't. The mention above made me try but I'm still not sure I have not created some duff page somewhere maybe related to my username. I did search the help and experimented. I probably got it wrong because I have noticed on another user they have a "sandbox" link top of user page (between username and logout) but I've not got one so I probably messed-up - and I consider myself quite technically oriented (having been a software developer for over 30 years). Good idea though (but maybe needs a bit more in help pages and for new users to be pointed towards it? That said, I think it would help but not solve the issue in that it would allow a new user not to have the initial "work in progress" main space page "descended on" - less of a negative if "Change Patrol" changes were made as one or two blocks rather than many different tweaks. Maybe it's the "History" that can make a few changes look worse (each done individually) or lots of changes look better (done as a single "publish"). PsamatheM (talk) 08:42, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Promote some more users to whatever the status is called that allows you to remove the red exclamation points

Swept in from the pub

When I do recent change patrol, I sometimes find it cluttered with red exclamation points for edits by users whom I know to be trustworthy (or at the very least as trustworthy as the "regulars") whose edits may sometimes contain typos or the likes, but who certainly do not warrant as much attention as other red exclamation point edits. Can we please move some of those from one category to the other? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:50, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Admins have the power to do that. Would you like to be nominated to serve as an admin? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:28, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Hobbitschuster is a member of the Patrollers group, which should give him the ability to patrol edits. Powers ^(talk) 20:35, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but that's not what he's complaining about above. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, right, sorry. That's what I get for being in a hurry. I suppose non-Admins are welcome to nominate users for auto-patrolled status. Powers ^(talk) 19:29, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:39, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Further on Recent changes patrol

Swept in from the pub

Do you think that Wikivoyage:Recent changes patrol should be mentioned in the welcome messages ({{subst:welcome}}, {{subst:welcomeanon}} and {{subst:wikipedian}})? I think a lot of new users think that when anyone comments on their edits on their user talk pages, there's some spooky or otherwise objectionable spying going on. See another example here. If we somehow included in all our welcome messages the fact that one of the useful things users can do is to patrol recent changes for accuracy and style, might we proactively address some of the confusion and bad feelings? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:35, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Good idea. Mention about how new user edits are "patrolled" and the "Recent Changes" list can draw the attention of others to the page. And maybe how this can also help a new contributor to be come familiar with layout standards, etc. but how content is more important than the niceties of layout so contributors much appreciated even if others do come along and tweak them it's not a negative or critical thing. PsamatheM (talk) 22:01, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Well... I don't disagree with that, but the long-term contributors to this site tend to be experienced Wikipedians, so they probably already know how to find such tools. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

This isn't about long-term contributors to this site. I'm proposing that a brief mention and explanation of Recent changes patrol be included in welcome messages for new users. If people agree that this is a good idea, we should discuss phrasing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:09, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

This is about accounts that are new to Wikivoyage ...most of whom are "old" to wikis. "New here" is not the same as "new". It looks like your first edit was at the English Wikipedia. My first edit was at the English Wikipedia. Nurg's first edit was at the English Wikipedia (albeit just a week before his first edit 'here'). AlasdiarW's first edit was at the English Wikipedia. Ground Zero's first edit was at the English Wikipedia. K7L's first edit was at the English Wikipedia. WOSLinker's first edit was at the English Wikipedia. Many of the "regulars" here started editing at some other wiki, and ended up here later. (This list of examples was taken from a quick look at the recent editors on this page.) So if the goal of the welcome template is to attract "regulars", why would we waste their time telling them one of the things that works exactly like it does at the wikis they're already familiar with? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:32, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

You are quite incorrect that most new users here are familiar with recent changes patrol. Even if they posted a few edits to Wikipedia, it does not follow that they automatically know what recent changes patrol is or how it works. I've had enough experience with new users taking offense at their contributions being edited or even commented upon to know that your perception is inaccurate. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:45, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

The only welcome message in which recent changes patrol could be soft-pedaled is {{subst:wikipedian}}, and even there, a short statement that "Like Wikipedia, Wikivoyage has a Recent changes patrol for checking new edits; you may want to participate as a patroller, and as on Wikipedia, you may also find that your edits and other content in articles you edit are subjected to quick followup edits." Such a statement could only help, in my opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:52, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm specifically thinking about focusing the welcome message on the subset of new users that are likely to become regulars (as opposed to touts, drive-by promoters, and other new users). It seems to me that if you want to increase the core group of regulars, then you need to write for experienced editors.

If your focus is on new-to-everything, then I think that it's more pointful to say "We work together, which means that other people will try to improve your contributions, and you should improve theirs". 02:44, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I get where you're coming from, but I don't think that our best users are all necessarily Wikipedia veterans. I don't know if I'm a good example, but if so: I have made occasional edits on Wikipedia for years, but mostly because when I read an article and see a typo or grammatical or spelling mistake, I correct it. So you could call me a longtime occasional, casual Wikipedia editor but no kind of veteran patroller or content provider, though I have provided some content for a few Wikipedia articles. Given the relatively small number of editors on this site, I wouldn't want to take any potentially constructive user for granted. All that said, I'm happy to discuss the best phrasing for addressing recent changes patrol, including something as simple as what you posted above, if there's any kind of consensus to add something about patrolling in welcome messages. I think it would help, because not a few users are put off by it, at least at first, and some of those folks probably stopped posting because of it, while others stayed and have indeed become valuable contributors. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:09, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Removing the rollback button

Swept in from the pub

As I can't find the discussion where it was decided to give some users including myself patroller (wasn't the rollback thing called patroller?) status, so I post this in the pub.

I never use the rollback button for reverting edits, and the only times I've "used" it, is when accidentally touching it when studying Recent changes, which has happened quite a few times, the last time 20 minutes ago or so. Apparently it's not possible to disable the button in the User preferences. Also, I can't remember when I "marked anything as patrolled". Therefore, would some admin or bureaucrat kindly remove my patroller status? ϒpsilon (talk) 05:45, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Rollback is very useful to remove obvious span/vandalism quickly. Are you sure you want to remove patroller status? Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:49, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

At least I am able to revert multiple edits by opening the page history and it doesn't take many seconds (can't speak for the other editors with patroller status, though). Rollback edits are marked as minor edits, and I've hidden minor edits in Recent changes, so it's possible that I haven't even noticed accidental rollbacks every time.

But well, if editors who've been around for a few years lose the right to continue as normal editors I guess I just need to be more careful when scrolling up and down Recent changes when logged in. --ϒpsilon (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

It's not just the rollback button, your edits will also be marked by small red exclamation points like the edits of newbies are... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:01, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Nope, patroller and autopatrolled are different things, users removed from the latter group have their edits marked by exclamation marks. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

All of us occasionally rollback something accidentally. If you're sure you want your patroller status ended, though, it's just a click for an admin to do it. So you're really sure about that? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:46, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. In fact, I roll things back accidentally far more often than I do so intentionally, and no one has taken issue with it yet. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:56, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Just remove it. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:36, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Done. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Great! Thank you! ϒpsilon (talk) 17:14, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I should point out here that the main purpose of the "patroller" right is to allow the marking of unpatrolled edits as patrolled. We all should be doing that as we edit -- if you see an unpatrolled edit you should either mark it patrolled or revert it. Powers ^(talk) 20:28, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes I see a red exclamation point edit and my reaction is "Well, I don't know" (the last two edits to Nazca are such a case) what should I do if that happens? Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I just looked at the exact same edits and had the same reaction, so would also appreciate some input. If a case is borderline where I don't really know if something is valuable or not because I don't know the destination, I tend to leave it to an editor who is familiar with the area. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 23:40, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm in Bolivia at the moment and I've talked to a couple of travellers who are using Peru Hop/Bolivia Hop. It seems to be reasonably popular, and I think it probably makes sense for us to cover it on Wikivoyage. I'm not a patroller, though, so I can't approve the edits myself. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:28, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

To me, marking a change as patrolled means it isn't spam, vandalism, and it's a vaguely coherent contribution to a travel guide. It doesn't mean that I've visited the destination and I can verify that the information is correct. 01:52, 7 December 2017 (UTC)Inas (talk)

Well but that user seems to have added that company to more than one article. Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:39, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Patrollers

Swept in from the pub

Shouldn't there be a page about patroller abilities, similar to that of WV:Administrators and WV:Autopatrollers. I also mentioned this in WV:RA. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:25, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps Wikivoyage:Recent changes patrol should explain both the "patroller" and "autopatrolled" status bits, instead of creating a page for Wikivoyage:Patrollers and Wikivoyage:Autopatrollers. K7L (talk) 16:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

True, it could be a page for both, since Wikivoyage:Autopatrollers is not very long. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:35, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't think this has happened yet. I agree with K7L that it's best to explain this on an existing page, instead of creating a new page for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Patrollers group

Swept in from the pub

The patrollers group has the ability to mark edits as patrolled, and to use rollback. However, there are only 4 users with that right, per Special:ListUsers/patroller (and one of them, ARR8, is an administrator so they already have those abilities). Is there a desire to use this group more? If so, maybe admins should be allowed to grant and remove this permission (as opposed to only bureaucrats, as things currently stand)? Wikivoyage talk:Recent changes patrol contains a few times where that was proposed but nothing came of it. --Rschen7754 01:50, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I will note that admins can add/remove the template editor group, which is probably more consequential. --Rschen7754 01:53, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd support admins having the privilege, but I'm an admin and not a bureaucrat, so I am biased. Also, consider that if someone has the trust to patrol, they generally have trust to be administrators too — therefore, users usually go straight to admin. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:12, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd support giving admins this power. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:53, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I question the need for this group at all. In addition to the point SelfieCity made about trust, the act of patrolling edits as such is not something the community here generally bothers with. In other words, edit volume on Wikivoyage is low enough that most problematic contributions eventually get seen and followed up on by admins anyway, without any need for the intermediate step of patrollers toggling the red exclamation point on and off. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:32, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Are you suggesting I'm wasting my time by marking anything as patrolled? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:37, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Strongly disagree with that sentiment, and support the initiative to expand the number of patrollers. I only look at unpatrolled mainspace edits, and mark them as patrolled when I have checked them. I know I am not the only one doing this. I find it immensely helpful. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 14:44, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Ikan Kekek and anyone who believes that we should mark edits as patrolled. It does no harm and helps us, whether marked by an admin or patroller. We've been doing it for years, and I don't think we should consider it a waste of time now. As for patrollers, I'm not so sure I think we should have them, but I think that point is worth discussing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:49, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm not saying that patrolling edits is a waste of time. What I am saying is that the volume of edits here by relation to the size and activity level of our admin community is such that we don't need a separate class of users who aren't admins, yet who have the power to mark edits as patrolled. In other words, SelfieCity was correct that if you're already keeping up with Recent Changes, reverting vandalism and touting, and counseling new users on mos issues, you're probably ready to be nominated for admin anyway. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:50, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

That's at least partially what I think. I think your statement "the act of patrolling edits as such is not something the community here generally bothers with" was seen my those who commented below as meaning, "I don't support it." I think there are valid arguments on both sides. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

On this wiki, the patrollers group also has the rollback tool, so the group could be useful in that regard. --Rschen7754 20:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

That's true; however, currently on WV only admins and existing patrollers regularly do anti-vandal work. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Is there consensus on this matter? I'm no longer very active here so I don't want to make that call. --Rschen7754 17:15, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Rschen, I don't see anyone strongly objecting to the idea of letting admins grant and remove this right, which seems to be considered relatively unimportant. I don't know whether any admin will bother with it (and I suspect that the standard message will be "Here's the right, and now let's get you over to the admin page..."), but nobody seems to think that it needs to be restricted to buros. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Okay. Submitted at phab:T222008. --Rschen7754 05:34, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

And this was done. --Rschen7754 01:28, 1 May 2019 (UTC)