Semi Protection

UESPWiki talk:Patrollers/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past UESPWiki talk:Patrollers discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Initial Feedback

This is just meant to be a starting point for this page. In particular, I'd like to have all the patrollers participate in the discussion about just what criteria to use for declaring an edit acceptable. I've really just filled in the criteria that I've been trying to use up until now. Also, Daveh surprised me with his quick response (thanks, Daveh!) so I hadn't quite finished with this page; I may add a few more thoughts later.

I'd like to give everyone a chance to just experiment with things to start out with. Although all the new patrollers really should change their preferences to get all their edits cleared (as described on the page) right away... that will clear out alot of the recent history really quickly. In other words, don't worry too much about the details for now, until we have a chance to reach some decisions as a group about standards.

I've been trying to get back into the habit of marking edits as patrolled for the last couple days, in the hopes of avoiding an overwhelming backlog when this started. However, the Special:Patrol page seems to want to start with the oldest edits (rather than the most recent edits), so using that tool you're likely to hit a lot of old edits for now (it started me on December 19th). Maybe it's a good thing the site was down for a couple weeks :) --Nephele 19:20, 8 January 2007 (EST)

I think the criteria you wrote are quite good. I say we start by following them and make changes/additions as we go along and gain more experience in the patrolling system. Regarding the Special:Patrol page, it seems to be going backwards in time (towards the past), starting around 16th December (if you click skip you'll see what I'm talking about), so it looks like it wants to patroll every single edit that has been done throughout the history of the UESP. The only solution to this is that someone with enough capabilities marks these pages as patrolled and we start patrolling from now on.
Another thing that we need is a clear way to get to this page. At the moment there's only a link buried in the Community Portal. A link in a more prominent place would be appreciated. --DrPhoton 03:57, 9 January 2007 (EST)
OK, I've added a more prominent link: right at the top of the Recent Changes page :) Let me know what you think. I'll also be working on generally adding more crosslinks to the UESPWiki pages, so hopefully the visibility should continue to improve.
I'm seeing the same thing with the Special:Patrol page, that it's working backwards in time. I'm not sure why it's starting from mid-December instead of starting from today... I'll try to root around in the code at some point to figure that one out. --Nephele 03:36, 10 January 2007 (EST)
Is it possible to just in one fell swoop mark every post made prior to, say, December all the way back to the day the site first went Wiki as patrolled? I don't think there's any need to have somebody go back and manually patrol all of those old edits, and it would be nice if the Special:Patrol page were only dealing with current posts rather than going way back into the history to posts that have very likely already been corrected if they were wrong. Also, it would be nice if there were some way where if you mark a page as patrolled in its current state, that all edits prior to the current state would automatically be marked as well. If a page is good in its current state, it shouldn't matter how much it had to go through to get to that state. Going through and manually marking every successive edit as patrolled just seems to be a bit of a waste of time to me. --TheRealLurlock Talk 11:06, 21 January 2007 (EST)
I agree both of those ideas would be useful, but I don't know of any easy way at the moment to implement them. --Nephele 12:24, 21 January 2007 (EST)
These are great ideas! Here's another one: it would be great to be able to select a particular namespace for the Special:Patrol page. For example, I'm not familiar with Oblivion yet, but I have been playing Morrowind and Bloodmoon extensively, so I would like to skip the Oblivion pages and concentrate on the others. --DrPhoton 08:27, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Nominations?

Not sure where to put this, but I'd like to nominate User:Uniblab as a patroller - mainly because he's posting a lot of Daggerfall information, and to my knowledge none of the rest of us know anything whatsoever about Daggerfall. He seems to be editing in good faith (I assume his information is accurate) and his formatting and spelling seem to generally be pretty good. (Formatting and spelling being the only things I can check with any degree of authority.) So I don't see a reason for his edits to be patrolled by the rest of us, since we don't know anything about the topic. --TheRealLurlock Talk 00:06, 12 January 2007 (EST)

I am flattered. I know Daggerfall because I've been playing it since her release, and have never played Morrowind or Oblivion. I assure you that you will never regret this; although you may experience rue and lament. Possibly nausea, and blurred vision too. Alcoholism may also occur with continued exposure. I accept this nomination and would serve if appointed. ⌈Uniblab 01:06, 12 January 2007 (EST)⌋
I'll vote in favour of Uniblab.
Except that then raises the question of what do we want the nomination process for patrollers to be? Nominate, one week of voting by the whole community, then a decision? Or something more streamlined? For example, if all the current patrollers vote in favor of it, declare the decision made even if that only takes a couple days? The only people who are really affected by adding a new patroller are the existing patrollers, so I'm inclined to think that the patrollers' votes are the most important. But I've spent all of about fifteen minutes thinking about this :) So does anyone else have any opinions? --Nephele 01:29, 12 January 2007 (EST)
I'll also vote in favour of Uniblab, as we need someone with Daggerfall experience.
Regarding the nomination process, I would go for patrollers and administrators vote of confidence. --DrPhoton 03:48, 12 January 2007 (EST)
I agree that approval from the current patrollers (including admins) is paramount, since patrollers must be able to trust each other's judgement, so they can trust that a page marked as patrolled really needs no further checking. However, a sufficiently large opposition from non-patrolling editors should perhaps also be taken into account to ensure general trust in the patrolling process itself. Certainly, no amount of popular support should be able to confirm a nominee whom the existing patrollers do not trust, but something like a "community veto" by significant opposition may be worth taking into account, at least.
Of course, 100.000 anonymous "Nay" votes from IPs belonging to the same ISP should not count as "significant". ^_^ -- JustTheBast 14:28, 5 March 2007 (EST)
I think I'd have to disagree on this count. Non-patrollers never even get to see when something is patrolled or not. Thus, who is and isn't able to patrol should be of little or no relevance to people who aren't themselves patrollers. Patroller status isn't really an earned privelege, like adminship. It's just a tool used by frequent error-checkers to save people from doing redundant work. As such, the only people who should care about who gets to be a patroller are people who already are patrollers. I doubt the issue will come up, honestly, because I don't think anyone is going to be that unpopular among the general populace without being equally hated by the patrollers. (And even that's unlikely, unless they're just vandals or spammers, in which case they get blocked.) Now I would say that some sort of system might need to be put in place whereby patroller status can be revoked if an editor is misusing it. (E.g. intentionally posting misinformation and marking it as patrolled in order to escape scrutiny.) Again, I doubt that this sort of thing is likely to be necessary, but it's worth looking into. --TheRealLurlock Talk 15:24, 5 March 2007 (EST)
You're right. Given that patrollership does not convey any privileges beyond those of regular editors, and that a significant difference between patroller consensus and general consensus is, as you point out, unlikely to occur, input from the unaffected wider community is unnecessary. No need to complicate a process, trying to anticipate needs that have not yet arisen and are unlikely to ever do so. -- JustTheBast 15:40, 5 March 2007 (EST)
Just to be the voice of contrarydom, I actually filter out patrolled edits when I'm patrolling, and I'm not a patroller. ;o) Jadrax 16:23, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Non-Patrolled Edits

Is it possible to make some edits exempt from patrolling? Mainly I'm thinking of edits to people's User: pages and perhaps also edits to any Talk: pages. Just seems to be unnecessary to go through patrolling those, so it'd be nice if such edits were marked as already patrolled, just like edits made by patrollers. --TheRealLurlock Talk 10:58, 21 January 2007 (EST)

I think those edits still need to be patrolled: it's possible to vandalize or spam a user page or talk page. The criteria may be less rigid for those pages, but there have been cases in the last couple months where user pages and talk pages were vandalized. Also, I think it's very useful to have talk page edits show up as not patrolled, at least until someone answers the question: when I'm looking back at edits that still need to be investigated, I think having unanswered questions show up is very useful. Or in cases where someone is asking for feedback on a talk page, it's probably useful for all the patrollers to look over the request in case any do have feedback. (In fact, I'd been thinking that it might be useful to think about a way to make it so even when a patroller asks a talk page question, it is not flagged as already patrolled). --Nephele 12:15, 21 January 2007 (EST)

By Nomination Only?

I'd like to propose some nomination rules somewhat on-the-fly here, just to give everyone some type of guidelines. As I've said below, I'm in favour of people self-nominating to be patrollers, since they know best whether or not they're interested in monitoring the recent changes page. It's also expected that nominees should have shown some experience with cleaning up edits, or otherwise doing some of the tasks expected of patrollers, so that people voting can have some history to base the votes on. On the other hand, patrollers are not expected to have comprehensive knowledge of everything on the site: each patroller helps by cleaning up edits that he/she is familiar with, and is encouraged to skip ones that he/she doesn't know what to do with.

I'd propose that the nomination process be one week long, during which anyone is free to contribute. Existing patrollers are particularly encouraged to contribute, since it's important that the patrollers trust each other's judgement. After a week, an admin will make a decision about what the consensus was, and forward the request to Daveh if appropriate.

Does that work for everyone, at least as a starting point? --Nephele 12:18, 5 March 2007 (EST)

GuildKnight

Are Patrollers selected by nomination only, or can I request to become a Patroller? --GuildKnight 22:27, 4 March 2007 (EST)

I would also like to know. 67.142.130.37 22:31, 4 March 2007 (EST)

Well, basically, we haven't really gotten around to discussing how to add new patrollers. I was thinking that having people nominate themselves would work best, since the main requirement is that editors be people who regularly check the recent changes page, and only the editors themselves really know that.
In any case, I would definitely second nominating GuildKnight to be a patroller, and vote in support of it :) --Nephele 22:33, 4 March 2007 (EST)
Ah I actually read it that Patrollers had to be nominated by existing patrollers, or i would have Suggested Guildknight already. Jadrax 02:56, 5 March 2007 (EST) ;o)
I'm also in favor of people nominating themselves for the same reasons that Nephele has given. Regarding GuildKnight's nomination, I don't know his edits well enough to vote in any direction, so my vote is neutral. --DrPhoton 03:52, 5 March 2007 (EST)

JustTheBast

Well, if self-nomination (otherwise known as "asking") is OK, I'd like to be considered as well, since the job description of a Patroller seems to be pretty much what I've been trying to do, since I came here - only without the helpful marking tool to tell me what still needs checking and what doesn't. Pretty please? -- JustTheBast 04:10, 5 March 2007 (EST)

I think making you a patroller would make sense, as well, if you log in ;o) Jadrax 04:16, 5 March 2007 (EST)
Thanks. Man, Not only do I keep forgetting to sign my contributions to talk pages (my subconscious keeps saying "Hey, the author is tracked automatically"), now I'm so used to being always logged in from home, that I forget to do so from work. Jeez, I thought I wouldn't get senile until I'm a little older than this. -- JustTheBast 04:36, 5 March 2007 (EST)
Support: I've noticed that JustTheBast is regularly helping out by catching and reverting vandalism, and answering questions that get asked on talk pages, and therefore seems like a perfect choice for a patroller. (And since the topic's been started, a couple other editors who are noticeably active at responding to recent changes and who I think would be good patrollers are Jadrax and Somercy, if either would be interested... hint, hint) --Nephele 12:05, 5 March 2007 (EST)
Erm, given the fact I can't spell for toffee, and have the grammatical grasp of a non grammar grasping thing, I think I will respectfully decline. Thanks for the confidence in me though ;o) Jadrax 12:36, 5 March 2007 (EST)
Nephele, see below. I've been waiting for an invite, but I see now I gotta be proactive, myself! Somercy 12:56, 5 March 2007 (EST)
Heh, I wasn't waiting, since I hadn't noticed that Patrollers exist until about a day ago. I had just begun to wonder how to ask about joining - and whom - when GuildKnight decided it for me. ^_^ -- JustTheBast 14:12, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Somercy

Another self-nomination, I guess. I often find myself on Recent Changes, doing little things like fixing vandalism and grammar issues. Either way, it's not like I'd stop if'n ya'll said no. Somercy 12:20, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Almost everything has been moved to UESPWiki:Patrollers/Nominations. --Ratwar 13:07, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Nominations and Policy

I'm just thinking that it might be easier to move all the nominations to a separate page such as UESPWiki:Patrollers/Nominations or a Patroller Notice Board. That way they won't clutter up this page to much, and they'll kinda mirror the administrator pages. I'd also like to rewrite the Criteria for "Patrolled" Edits section, as it currently only contains suggestions for criteria along with suggestions that we ought to have a more defined criteria. Any thoughts? --Ratwar 12:17, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Sounds great to me. And I agree that the patrollers article needs some updating now that we have some experience with the system; if you're interested in tackling any of it, go for it :) --Nephele 12:24, 5 March 2007 (EST)
I created the subpage, and I'll tackle the policy changes in the near future.--Ratwar 13:10, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Still a "Proposed Guideline?"

...or should we remove the first couple of sentences? --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 20:12, 4 November 2007 (EST)

I'd vote for taking it off, considering we use it as a pretty definitive guideline now. --Eshetalk20:18, 4 November 2007 (EST)
Yeah, that probably didn't even need to be asked; it's easily reversed, so I'll go ahead and remove it. --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 21:26, 4 November 2007 (EST)

Okay, here's a better question...

Is there any way to make the patroller functions work any time a patroller views a "difference" page? As in, I want to be able to open my watchlist email, click on the "See (link) for all changes since your last visit," and then if the edit has not been patrolled have the "Mark as Patrolled" option on the difference page. --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 22:21, 4 November 2007 (EST)

That'll be great, but I guess it will require some administrator intervention, or even mofifying the wiki code itself. Another interesting thing to have would be to be able to limit the Patrol Tool to a certain namespace of your choice. Many of us contentrate on a certain game, e.g. Morrowind in my case, and don't need to go through all the other unpatrolled pages. --DrPhoton 03:40, 5 November 2007 (EST)

Two Questions

I just noticed there's no trail on this page at the moment. It's almost a policy page but not quite - is the policy trail the one to use or is there a better one? Second: I thought I'd ask what people think about this as a new Q/A entry:

Question
A user asked a question on a talk page. I don't know the answer but there's nothing wrong with the post. Should I mark it as patrolled?
  • No. Hopefully another patroller will spot the question and be able to answer it.

RpehTCE 10:42, 29 December 2007 (EST)

The policy trail seems as good as any. The only other possibly relevant one would be the generic Template:UESPWiki Trail. And the Q/A look good to me :) --NepheleTalk 14:34, 29 December 2007 (EST)
Okay I've added the trail but I'll hold off adding the new Q/A until we've resolved the That's A Good Question! debate. —RpehTCE 12:15, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks Everyone!

I know patrolling can seem like a thankless task sometimes. Most of the feedback tends to be of the negative variety (e.g., "Why'd you delete my stuff?!"), and it's hard to know whether readers really notice the increase in site quality caused by patrolling. So I thought everyone might be interested in some positive feedback about UESP's great reputation for reliability and quality.

In particular, browsing through the official forums (yes, forums!) provides overwhelming evidence of how well UESP is regarded, even amongst what should be an impartial crowd of readers. Some general indications:

  • Roughly 100 posts per day mention UESP; UESP links and attributed quotes from UESP articles are regularly used to answer questions.
  • UESP is generally treated as the authoritative source, i.e., a quote from UESP dispels any uncertainty.
  • Many forum readers have UESP links in their signatures (and, no, these aren't UESP editors: I did not recognize most of the names).
  • It's also impressive how closely some of the forum readers track UESP: information that has only recently been added regularly gets quoted.
  • There were very few negative comments. In a couple cases where UESP's accuracy was questioned, other forum readers backed UESP and/or explained the source of misunderstanding. Other than that, all I saw were a couple of comments about performance in the "Revitalizing the CS wiki" thread. And for comparison, that thread shows how even a wiki with dedicated, hard-working, and well-intentioned editors can end up with a reputation for being unreliable [1].

Given the huge volume of positive UESP quotes, I won't even try to quote them all ;) But just from the last ten days, some of the better quotes are:

  • General thanks:
    • "Thank the guys from UESP for providing the site" [2]
    • "Your uesp is a big help." [3]
    • "Wiki is a great site, don't know why I haven't looked at it before." [4]
    • "Yet another reason UESPwiki is awesome" [5]
    • "The UESP knows all." [6]
  • Advice to use UESP:
    • "Also for most of your future Oblivion needs and questions can be answered here. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Oblivion" [7]
    • "Also, bookmark the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages . It will answer a lot of questions you have, help solve bugs and give you advice you when you are stuck." [8]
    • "I'm surprised [he] didn't mention the Morrowind UESP wiki. That has all that you wanted to know about Morrowind but didn't know how to ask." [9] (although the first person actually had mentioned UESP... ;) )
    • "As for UESPwiki it is a ludicrously big data base on anything to do with the elderscrolls. Type what you want in the search engine, and u will 99% of he time get a good answer." [10]
  • General reliability:
    • "If uesp says it, there is a good chance it is true" [11]
    • "Yeah, I trust the UESP." [12]
    • People even get harassed for quoting from UESP without attribution: "You didn't find that out, you just pasted it from UESP." [13]
  • UESP vs. the Official Strategy Guide:
    • "When reading the guide book, you must remember: The only thing it is good for is either a paper weight or coaster. The UESP is much more up to date and accurate then the guide, and is also free." [14]
    • "10 words: "Waste of money, UESP is more accurate and constantly updated" [15]
    • Some humour on the "pros and cons of the guide book vs UESP" [16]
  • Other random comments:
    • "Use the UESP wiki. There's a fantastic page showing all the trainers and whatnot at the wiki." [17]. There are lots of other links with similar compliments about other individual wiki pages.
    • "I saw a couple of scenic screenies posted over at UESP that are simply beautiful" [18]
    • "I see it everywhere, I've yet to comment on it, but.. what's UESP? Underhanded Entertainment Silencing Pamphlet" [19]

And, saving the best for last, my favorite quote:

  • "Also, I'd stick [to] the UESP for most of your Elder Scrolls questions. It gets really annoying when people link other sites and all of a sudden there's a wave of people posting about hoaxes." [20]

Happy patrolling :) --NepheleTalk 21:01, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks for the cheering and the great quotes! I must say that us patrollers are not the only one to thank, but we should also thank Daveh for setting up this wonderful site many years ago, the sysops for keeping order in this wiki, and most importantly the editors for their great contributions, without which this site would never have existed. --DrPhoton 03:36, 20 February 2008 (EST)

"Special" People

Okay, we all know that there are a few "special" (in both senses of the word) people around here, but what I'm wondering is just who are these special people? Not specifically, but rather what are the categories of special people and what are their duties and privileges in a nutshell? From browsing around, I've found references to various types of special people, including:

  • Host - Daveh (the most special of all)
  • Bureaucrats
  • Administrators
  • Patrollers

The Administrators and Patrollers pages make it fairly clear what they're all about, but I was thinking that perhaps someone "more in the know" than I could create a small page about who the special people are (including any I may have missed) and give a quick blurb on the distinguising characteristics of their job functions. (And then, of course, make it available on various Policy pages, etc.)

I'd be willing to do it myself, but in the end, I think someone else would end up having to do most of the work for me, because outside of the Admins and Patrollers, I don't know what the various people do. I also don't know which policy pages, etc., a link to this information would be appropriate on. --Robin Hood 23:10, 22 February 2008 (EST)

There's an attempt to summarize at UESPWiki:Administrators#Other Administrative Roles. If you can think of a better place to move that section, feel free to do so. Or if there's any more that needs to be fleshed out, just say what you think is needed. --NepheleTalk 00:09, 23 February 2008 (EST)
Well now I feel dumb. ;) I scrolled right to the bottom of the page and scanned the "See Also" section, and completely missed the nice little summary right above it. I would say it should be copied to the Patrollers page as well, or perhaps a new page created and links put in both pages, as well as any others that exist for each of those roles (if any). I don't know the "special" pages all that well, so I'm not sure where else it might be appropriate, but I could probably do a search and see if I can find anything else. Any thoughts any one? --Robin Hood 01:44, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Proposal: A Recent Developments list

I know my application is still pending, however... I'd like to to propose a Recent Development list over community consensus on Patrol issues. Recently, there have been some confusion like here resulting in multiple undo/reverts, all because we lack a central place to gain a quick overview without having to dig. Wouldn't it be great to have an At-One-Glance overview for old hands, new, infrequent and unofficial patrollers alike?

If accepted, I suggest the second paragraph of UESPWiki:Patrollers, so casual people interested in helping out can see it directly. I'd volunteer to maintain it, of course anyone can add to the list, and it'd be limited to 5 items at a time.

it would look something like this:

Quick, and not too much trouble. I believe it would greatly enhance communications. Thanks for you time & consideration. --BenouldTC 12:34, 25 April 2008 (EDT)

Seems like a good idea to me. It might also be useful to have a categorized version, although maybe that would just end up being put on the appropriate pages (e.g., Spelling). --Robin Hood (TalkE-mailContribs) 13:04, 25 April 2008 (EDT)
If there are editors who will find it useful, and editors who are willing to do the work, then I suppose there's no real reason not to do it.
However, I am a bit concerned about the potential for confusion over what is a "recent development." I don't think that this discussion introduced any new developments. For one thing, I don't have the authority to make changes to site policy just by saying it's so -- changes can only come about through community discussions. I also don't think there's anything new about the concept that red links should be left in place if the article is going to be created -- that's why the special page listing red links is named Wanted pages, not "broken links" or "links that need to be deleted". Nevertheless, there are still many situations when it is appropriate to get rid of red links on pages. For example, most of the red links on this version of the Fort Frostmoth article were caused by incorrect links. Since we don't want to have a Bloodmoon article on the Imperial Legion, it was more appropriate to change the link to point to the correct article, namely Morrowind:Imperial Legion. --NepheleTalk 13:44, 25 April 2008 (EDT)
Thanks for the feedback so far, and for clarifying the red link part. The issue is better illustrated by this red link. Pay no attention to the fact that I spelled Morrpwind wrong XDD --BenouldTC 14:11, 25 April 2008 (EDT)
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