[WikiEN-l] Massive AfC backlog

[David Goodman]

I've worked very often at CSD, but I have just now been taking a look
at AfC, in response to the messages about the backlog. It surprised me
initially to see that articles I would certainly have passed at speedy
were being declined there, & I was going to post a complaint about it.
But then I though it over again:

I think the effectual standard being used by some of the reviewers at
AfC is not whether it will pass speedy, but whether it would be likely
to pass AfD.  Though seeing this surprised me at first, i can see
reason for it . Passing speedy does not mean it is an acceptable
article. About 500 articles that pass speedy are deleted every week,
either by Prod or AfD. Speedy is for articles that can be
unambiguously deleted, and some classes of things that may well be
utterly non-notable --  such as products and computer programs and
books -- are excluded from the speedy  process because of the
difficulty in passing a rapid unambiguous judgment. Why should we
accept an article at AfC on a self-published book without any reviews
to be found?  If the rules were to accept it, I would need after
accepting it to send it immediately to AfD & it would surely be
deleted. The criterion at speedy A7 is the deliberately very low bar
of indicating some good faith importance, which is much less than
notability. Asserting someone has played on a college baseball team is
enough to pass speedy--a person might reasonably thing an encyclopedia
like WP should cover such athletes. But we don't, and unless there is
exceptional non-local sourcing, the article will inevitably be
deleted.  Why should we accept it at AfC?

In such cases, we serve the user better to direct them to more
fruitful topics. Perhaps the effective standard should be , having a
plausible chance at AfD. I agree that some people at AfC are wrongly
rejecting on the apparent basis of it never having potential for being
a GA.

Similarly, if the grammar or referencing style is so weak that if I
accepted it, I would feel an obligation to rewrite it, why should I
not try to get the original contributor to improve this? We can't
delete articles even at AfD on such grounds, but should we encourage
people to write them ?


On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Matthew Bowker
<matthewrbowker.wiki at me.com> wrote:
> Hi, all.
> Replies inline.
>
>
> On Jun 19, 2012, at 01:59 PM, Steven Walling <steven.walling at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:
>>
>> > There is currently an enormous backlog at Articles for Creation, of over
>> > 700 articles.
>> >
>> > If you've got some time spare, it'd be great if you could help work on
>> > the
>> > AfC backlog.
>> >
>> > See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AFC
>> >
>> > Many hands make light wiki-work. ;-)
>> >
>>
>> Thank you for bringing this up Tom.
>>
>> As a volunteer admin, it looks to me like AFC is horrible mess. Not only
>> has there always been a large backlog,
>
>
> The backlog is routinely at 800+ articles, if anyone is curious.  Last time
> it wasn't marked at a backlog, a couple other editors and I spent about 36
> hours off and on cutting the backlog.  It was back within two days.
>
>
>
>> but articles that have references
>> and would normally pass the CSD barrier at New Page Patrol are routinely
>> rejected for trivial reasons.
>
>
> Again, I see this a lot.  Actually, I sometimes override declines after
> users come into the IRC help channel asking for an explanation.  At the very
> least, a "guide" page should be developed outlining exactly what each
> decline reason is and how it should be applied.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think we need to brainstorm ways to either drastically improve AFC's
>> ability to review articles in a reasonable time, or discuss not
>> highlighting it so prominently to authors of new articles. People who
>> actively seek input from other editors before publishing articles in
>> mainspace are our most promising new editors, and we're doing them a grave
>> disservice right now.
>>
>> Steven
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>
>
>
> Even through all that, I believe AfC needs to exist.  It does provide a
> great service to anon editors who won't create accounts for whatever reason.
> I think the biggest thing we should do right now is recruit more editors to
> AfC.  I sound like a broken record, but 3 or 4 of us really can't review
> articles effectively.
> Just my $0.02
>
> Matthew Bowker
>
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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG