Wikipedia talk:Peer review/Archive 4

February 2008 change in nomination and archiving process

The nomination and archiving process for peer reviews has been changed. The main reason for this change is to fix a problem with the previous process: when an article received more than one peer review, the previous peer review page needed to be moved, and all of the links to the previous peer review had to be fixed. In the new process, every peer review will be placed on a new unique page, so that peer reviews never need to be moved. In order to do this, the nomination process has changed.

• Instead of adding the {{peer review}} template to the talk page, you need to add {{subst:PR}}. This finds the next available peer review page. (It only works if there have been fewer than five previous peer reviews, but I don't know of any cases where this is not true.)
• The process for resubmitting peer reviews is identical to the process for requesting peer reviews, which should make it easier to do correctly.
• The process for archiving peer reviews is simpler: it only requires two edits, and no page moves.

The templates which make this possible are new, and quite complicated. Please report any issues here. Geometry guy 00:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The new page names confused me at first; seeing a PR I was working on get moved to an archive subpage made me think that the PR was archived. Instead of having the word archive, I suggest simply having /1, /2, /3... It would also be nice if the bot edited the archived PR and said that the PR is archived. The way things are done now is non-intuitive, at least for me. But those two small changes would fix that. Just my 2 cents. --mav (talk) 04:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree...by placing archive, many users may feel like the peer review is closed and they will not contribute to the review. I started a peer review for Heroes (TV series) and when I saw the title changed to archive, I at first thought someone had closed the peer review and it had ended...this will surely confuse people who are new to the process of contributing to peer reviews. Please make a note of this for future updates.--Chrisisinchrist (talk) 05:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I told someone I would do a peer review and they said not to bother as it had been archived for some reason - I knew what was going on, but it can be confusing. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 05:46, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I completely understand this issue with the changes, and I largely agree: before introducing this system at PR, I introduced it at Good article reassessment, and there I used /1, /2, /3 ... exactly as mav suggests above. GAR has no history of storing each discussion in a separate page so I could start afresh with the "ideal solution".

On the other hand, PR has a long history of using such pages, and the format "/archiveN" for the permanently linkable discussion has been the standard for some time. It is also the standard used at WP:FAC and WP:FAR, where GimmeBot maintains the archives. So, it was a compromise, and we simply settled for maximum consistency with the past. The legacy of peer reviews at really quite random locations is only now being sorted out.

I hope this is largely a transitional issue caused by me actually having to move some current peer reviews to the new location. In future, and it is already happening, all peer reviews will start on the /archiveN page, which should make it more than obvious to everyone that they are active. Anyway, it is clearly worth adding a couple of notes to the PR instructions to clarify this issue, so thank you all for commenting on this.

I'm not sure if I understand mav's comment that "It would also be nice if the bot edited the archived PR and said that the PR is archived." There is no bot editing archived peer reviews: however, I think this concern might be addressed if I changed the archiving template {{PR/archive}} so that it adds the text "This peer review has now been archived." to the peer review when someone archives it. Is that what you have in mind? If so, do others agree that this is a good idea? It works for me. Geometry guy 20:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

In the case I cited, the question was directly caused by the move to the ".../archive1" naming format. It makes sense that once people are used to making the archive from day one, this may be less confusing. I do think some sort of message that the page is archived would be very useful - before you knew it from the page move, and the archive notice on the article's talk page still works, but just looking at the peer review page now does not tell you it is no longer active. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1865773 out of 2048000 bytes (182227 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Back down to 1600KB now, thanks VB. Geometry guy 12:02, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Peer reviews by topic

Further to several discussions on this page, I've now set-up a demonstration of a peer review page with peer reviews organised by topic. The possible topics are:

Arts · Language and literature · Philosophy and religion · Everyday life · Social sciences and society · Geography and places · History · Engineering and technology · Natural sciences and mathematics

At the moment the mock-up only lists the current peer reviews for which a topic is specified. To add your peer review to the demo, just fill in the topic parameter in the {{Peer review page|topic=}} template on the review page for the article. Short names for the topics are:

arts · langlit · philrelig · everydaylife · socsci · geography · history · engtech · natsci

(Or "math", as an alternative in the last case.) Peer reviews without a specified topic will be listed in a separate section for "General" peer reviews.

If editors are in favour of this change, it will now be extremely easy to implement. Most, if not all, previous comments on this idea have been in favour. So take a look at the demo, and comment below on whether we should go ahead. Thanks, Geometry guy 21:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, lets try it. Comments welcome. Geometry guy 13:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

As someone who does all the semiautomated peer reviews (as AZPR) and helps a lot with archiving, I see some potential problems with this. When the peer reviews were chronological, I would start at the top and work my way down for semi-automated peer reviews. Similarly I would start at the bottom and work my way up for archiving. Now I will have to work my way through each section - not impossible, just more work. I wonder if people looking for new peer review requests will ignore those towards the bottom (the General category)? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:49, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like an argument for more fully automating the archiving process, if that's possible. Mike Christie (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see that happen, and am hoping that HappyMelon or Gimmetrow will be willing to help. At the moment HappyMelon is very generously sorting out the existing PR archives. Geometry guy 14:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I understand those concerns, which were issues when sorting by topic was tried in the past, and was partly why I waited a full week for comments before trying it! Sorting by topic has only been made feasible now by streamlining the archiving process. The articles are still sorted by date in each section, and there are still the same number of pages to add SAPRs to or archive, so the difference in the work involved should not be too large. Also several sections have very few articles in them, so that one can see at a glance whether they need SAPRs or archiving. If it really proves to be a lot more work, then we can revert to the old system.

For the second concern, it will be interesting to see what happens. The hope is that nominators will be encouraged to add topic names to their PR requests to make them more visible to interested reviewers. Geometry guy 14:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Additional comment: there is now also a page Wikipedia:Peer review list (with shortcut WP:PRL) which lists current peer reviews without transcluding them. Some reviewers may find that page easier to browse. However, it only supplies the automatically generated dates, which, for articles not in the "general" section are the dates when the topic parameter was added, so it will be a little while before these dates are a good reflection of the date when then peer review was started. (Stabilizing most of these dates is another reason why I waited a while before trying sorting by topic.) Geometry guy 14:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Semi-automated discussion

Just so you understand how AZPR works, I always have to open each article and cut and paste the semiautomated peer review into a word processor, then paste a bunch of those into the current WP:PR/A. As for the notices in the individual peer reviews, it used to be that I could add up to 20 notices in the peer reviews themselves at a time, with essentially one click. This broke when the page went to transclusion from the Veblenbot list, so then it became opening each separate peer review, adding the notice (that is still automatic once that peer review is opened) and then navigating back to the next peer review (going back takes 3-4 clicks, so for 20 requests I went from 1-2 clicks to about 80-100). Since they were in chronological order, I always knew where the last one I added was and worked to there and stopped. Now I have to check each category. Each incremental change has not been that much extra work, but together they are a lot of extra work. Would it be possible to still make the chronological list and put it in some lonely page not widely advertised? Just curious, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, this information is useful, although it is a pity we were not having this discussion a week ago! :-) At the moment, there is not a chronological list of all the current peer review pages, but there is a chronological list of all article talk pages of current peer reviews: it can be found at User:VeblenBot/C/Requests for peer review, and I can use this to generate a chronological list in whatever format you would like.

However, such a list would not "know" which "archive" page the peer review is on, so it probably wouldn't be much use to you. If I move fairly swiftly, I may be able to recreate a chronological list of current peer review pages from Category:General peer reviews by taking advantage of VeblenBot's caching feature: if I re-add all current PRs to the category, VeblenBot should still have a record of when they were originally added. I think this cache lasts 48 hours. I can't guarantee that this would work and will need Carl's help, but I'm happy to give it a go.

It sounds to me, from your description, that we need to automate, at least partially, the semiautomated review process. In particular, adding the notices is a repetetive task which should be done automatically, either using a bot, or some template magic. In the former case, we will have to ask one of our bot operating friends. In the latter case, we need some way for the peer review page of each article to "know" if a semi-automated peer review has been generated. Unfortunately, pages cannot read their own backlinks, so the only way I can think of doing this is to place SAPRs on separate pages and use "#ifexist" or a category, and that would mean that you couldn't add a bunch of them at a tim, which will probably add to the work rather than reduce it!! If anyone has any clever ideas, please comment here! Geometry guy 16:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thinking out loud here, there may be a way to do this. If each automated peer review had an "onlyinclude" section containing something like {{#ifeq:{{PAGENAME}}=pagename of peer review|display the notice}} then the automated peer review page for the current month could be transcluded onto each peer review page. A template substitution could set this up on each peer review page, and another template substitution could be used to provide the required code on the automated peer review page. Thanks to the new preprocessor, this would probably add very little to the size of the transcluded peer reviews. Would that work? Geometry guy 21:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I am not a programmer here - AndyZ wrote the script and shared the AZPR account with me when he became less active here (I had done the SAPRs by hand before when he was on wikibreaks). So I am not sure how the script works exactly and am not the best person to ask - I have AndyZ's email address and can contact him if you want (or his email address was enabled last I checked). Let me explain how the semi-automated peer review works in theory and painful detail. I will pick the article Jane Zhang at random. In the Jane Zhang peer review I pasted the following notice just by clicking the edit button as AZPR:

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Thanks, APR _t 15:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC) (I fixed the link, see below)

To save space, the actual SAPR is in Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008, specifically here. The new naming convention has brken this too as the script now links to Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008#Jane Zhang/archive1 but the actual file is Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008#Jane Zhang. Anyway, the idea I had was could a bot just check if there was a SAPR in the Automated file for that month? If not, add one there and the link to it in the PR itself. If so, skip it. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've used this example to test my concept: I've replaced the link at Wikipedia:Peer review/Jane Zhang/archive2 by a transclusion of Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008. The idea is that every peer review page will automatically transclude the /Automated page of the current month at the time the peer review requested. (This will simply be added to {{PR/subst}}.) Then the peer review script needs to be modified so that the introductory sentence (in the variable initMsg_PR) is modified to include in addition the text

<onlyinclude>{{#ifeq:{{BASEPAGENAME}}|Peer review/(article name)|*A script has been used to generate a semi-[[User:AndyZ/peerreviewer|automated]] review of the article for issues relating to grammar and [[WP:MOS|house]] style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click [[Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/(month name)#(article name)|here]]. Thanks, ~~~~}}</onlyinclude>

I don't know enough JavaScript to write the code that will produce the month name and article name, but it should be fairly straightforward to do. (The current month could also be passed as a parameter in the peer review page transclusion.)

With this in place, you would never have to edit individual peer review pages. Also, it would be possible to automatically put peer review pages without an SAPR into a category so that you can easily find them. This feature could be switched off by nominators who don't want an SAPR. Geometry guy 13:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool, so only the SA peer reviews would have to be run and pasted into the correct folder and then they would show up. I have also thought of two things - one is the current SAPRs seem to get a bit lost, so do you think it would be useful to have a subheader or something to set them off more? The other is unrelated to this question - do you think it would be useful to add a notice to peer reviews that have no replies after a week reminding them of the volunteers etc? I will email AndyZ about this next - I do not even know where the code is for the script (monobook?) Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Second thought - if the notification sentence is now part of what is generated by {{PR/subst}}, why does it have to be changed in the semi automated peer review script at all? The script would only be used to generate the SAPR itself, not the notice, right? Or am I missing something? I left a notice on AndyZ's talk page and emailed him. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(←) I haven't forgotten this! The script is at User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js: I've checked I can edit this (I think any admin can), so we don't necessarily need AndyZ to reply (although it would help): DrKiernan has some experience with editing this script, so he may be able to check we don't make a mistake. Concerning the notice, at the moment it is not in {{PR/subst}}, but is placed in the "onlyinclude" section of the SAPR itself. (Open edit previews at Wikipedia:Peer review/Jane Zhang/archive2 and Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008#Jane Zhang to see how it is done.) I agree with you that most of the notice could be placed in {{PR/subst}}, but not all of it, for two reasons.

1. The article's peer review page has no way to know if an SAPR has taken place: there needs to be some information on the SAPR which the article's peer review page can read: it could just be <onlyinclude>{{#ifeq:{{BASEPAGENAME}}|Peer review/(article name)|yes}}</onlyinclude>, but there needs to be something.
2. The article's peer review page has no way to know when an SAPR has taken place, and who generated it. To fix this, the "onlyinclude" section needs to at least contain <onlyinclude>{{#ifeq:{{BASEPAGENAME}}|Peer review/(article name)|~~~~}}</onlyinclude>. The rest could be put in {{PR/subst}}.

So some edit needs to be made, either to User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js or to User:AZPR/monobook.js. Does that clarify? Geometry guy 21:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation - I think I understand it and why the script needs to be modified too. I archived and ran the SAPRs earlier and just checked my email and there is no word from AndyZ yet. I would say go ahead and fix it. If for some reason you need access to the account, let me know. I have some other ideas to suggest, but will do that below. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've made an edit which I think will add the above onlyinclude information to each SAPR. Could you check that SAPRs still work. Note I have not yet implemented the automation of the notice: I want to be sure the script change works okay first. Revert my edit to User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js in the event of any disasters! Thanks for moving the other ideas to a new thread. Geometry guy 21:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm here (sorry for being so slow) — but I'm having a bit of trouble following all of the naming changes etc that have occurred, so I'm reading through everything right now.

I'm fixing the Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008#Jane Zhang/archive1 link issue, but theres a bunch of other link changes that I have to chase through. Responding to the original topic; I should be able to get a batch 'add notice' button directly to User:VeblenBot/C/Requests_for_peer_review, but for some reason I can do everything but add the actual button itself (think it may have to do with changes I've missed from while I was away). AZ _t 01:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)I ran some SAPRs as AZPR and it works except for a new bug - when you open the article there is an error message that says "There are already suggestions here. / Continuing will cause the old suggestions to be overwritten. / Do you wish to proceed? If you click the red X or cancel, the SAPR window shows up but it just says "undefined". Clicking OK gets the regular SAPR. I pasted two into Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/February 2008: Expo '88 and Francis B. Wai, but did not add notices to their requests. I did add some notices on others and that worked fine. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The only change I made is this and it seems to have had the desired effect on the two peer reviews you mention. The /archive1 link issue doesn't need to be fixed, since the notice will soon be generated by {{PR/subst}}. Geometry guy 09:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I made another change to switch from "onlyinclude" to "noinclude": I'm not sure if this was necessary. Anyway, I've fixed up PR/subst to add the current month to PR/header, which tells the latter to look for an SAPR and display a message if there is one. This is working on the recent SAPRs. The automatic notices may fail if the article title has slashes or non-standard characters in it. Please report any problems here. Geometry guy 11:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Troubleshooting

1. The bug I described above is still present - when I open an article as AZPR or when I open the script as Ruhrfisch, there is the error message and I have to click OK to get the actual semi-automated peer review (so two clicks are needed now where one was before).
2. I also notice that when I open a request, I see the SAPR there, but it is not visible in the big list. The problem is I then have to open each request to see if it already has a SAPR or not.
3. Finally, I noticed that when I submitted a PR request recently it took a while for it to go to the final PR (still had the do this to finish the request, but when you clicked on the link, it was done and showing up). Now at Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Kannada_literature a similar problem is being reported. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

It probably needs someone who understands the full workings of the script to see why this is happening. In the meanwhile, the best I can do is try to isolate the issue. That is, I will undo AndyZ's edits (to fix the /archiven issue, which shouldn't be necessary), so that the only change is a single edit to the script by me. If the problem persists, we then will know that my edit has some unintended consequence, and can try to figure out what that is and fix it.

Concerning the PR request issue. If I understand correctly, what you are saying is that the article talk page still shows "Follow this link" for a while, even though the peer review page has been created, and it should be showing "A request has been made"? I believe this is a cache issue, and it probably isn't enough to bypass your own local cache, as the article talk page doesn't change when the peer review page is created. So, you either need to make an edit to the article talk page, or purge the server cache (just go to the talk page history and replace "action=history" in the URL by "action=purge" and reload).

I'm afraid this is a price we pay to prevent Wikipedia from grinding to a halt! Geometry guy 09:52, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I numbered the issues for clarity. In reverse order, I understand the cache issues with #3, thanks for clarifying. As noted, the peer review request worked despite appearing "unfinished", so I don't think it is a problem and, as you note, there is not much we can do about it. As for #2, I am not sure if it is a related problem to the cache issue or not - none of the reviews have shown up yet (a couple of days since the first SAPR only in WP:PR/A without the manual notice). Now that the reviews are sorted by topic, I rely on the SAPR showing up on the main page to know whether or not to add it. When I do it as AZPR, I can't easily check either as the script automatically adds the SAPR notice if the peer review for an article is opened. I suppose I could do the SAPRs and note the date and time and then just add them to articles listed after the time of the last SAPR run. As for #1, let me know when you have made the change(s) and I will test as AZPR and myself. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Concerning #1, I've now undone Andy's two edits, so please check if this makes any difference. Concerning #2, it is possible that this is a side-effect of no longer posting a manual notice, but this will require further investigation (and probably help from Andy). Concerning #3, I think I can provide a partial fix by making the link to the article talk page on the peer review page automatically bypass the server cache. The cost to the servers will be tiny, and it would provide a reassuring check for nominators. Geometry guy 21:03, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

1. 1 is still present when I run SAPRs as Ruhrfisch and as AZPR. As for #2, I also logged in anonymously and the SAPR shows up right away when you click on the review from the main WP:PR page, but still does not appear on the main page itself. I am not very worried about #3. On an earlier comment, I meant to say that the AZPR script does not work on ampersands and other special characters anyway, so I run them as Ruhrfisch and will manually add a notice on those few cases (Mirth & Girth is one currently up on PR). Thanks for all of your work on this, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

#1 (I had randomly selected ~~~~ to be a seed to see if the suggestions were already opened, and then when Geometry Guy added the new initial message it contained ~~~~). #2 is going to be considerably more difficult. Perhaps we could go back to doing the SAPRs in chronological order thru the VeblenBot subpage, but that doesn't give the archive number I believe. I don't know if ampersands are fixable or not, due to regular expression limitations. AZ _t 16:54, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Thanks Andy, runs as myself and AZPR found no trace of bug #1. I can work around #2 for now (I did yesterday without too much trouble with a second anonymous window open to check). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've been stalling doing this, but the need is now clear: I'm going to recreate a category list containing all peer reviews with archive numbers, along the lines of User:VeblenBot/C/Arts peer reviews. I'll need Carl's help to get the cached dates of the current peer reviews. This should provide you with the chronological list of all reviews that you need (and which Ruhrfisch asked for at the very start of this SAPR discussion). Geometry guy 18:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't appear under "requests"?

I requested a peer review for McFly (band) but it doesn't seem to be under "requests". Did I do something wrong? -- Stacey _{talk to me} 20:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No, you did fine: I predict it will appear at about 20:36 UTC, assuming VeblenBot approves of your request :-) :-) Geometry guy 20:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Prediction wrong. There may be a temporary problem with the servers. If it doesn't appear in the next hour, I'll investigate. Geometry guy 20:42, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I had a look, and I think the problem is that VeblenBot is on a temporary mission. VeblenBot is an "it", not a "she", so isn't so great at multitasking. Please be patient, your peer review will be listed in due course :-) Geometry guy 22:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The issue isn't the special mission; there's no reason why the categories should stop being updated while those edits are made. The real problem is that something went wrong on the toolserver. I moved the code to my home computer, where the rest of VeblenBot's functions run, and everything seems better. I'm expecting it to run again at 1:20 UTC and I'll check it then to make sure. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:23, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

It's working now: apologies to VeblenBot for doubting its abilities! Geometry guy 09:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1848023 out of 2048000 bytes (199977 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 20:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• I just archived several, really should do this every day, sorry. I also was wondering about limiting the number of requests a single user can make at one time. For example, last month there were 7 or 8 wrestling articles in a row nominated by the same user and all but 1 or 2 got no comments (and my guess is that the articles were similar enough that a good PR on one of them would have had useful tips for all of them). Something similar has happened recently with some indie wizard rock albums, except these are back in the pipeline again already (I don't normally nominate articles at AfD, but if these go back into PR right away this time... ;-) ). Would 3 or 4 active requests at a time be OK? I also think replying to a good PR takes time, so there is that issue. I also wonder about a time limit to renominate PRs, but can understand the frustration there if no one replies but the APR script. Sigh, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks! I just untranscluded two very long peer reviews: in terms of the pressure on this page, long reviews are probably more of an issue than many short requests (although that depends on how many short requests there are and how long are the reviews!). I'd be hesitant about saying "you cannot nominate more than 4 PRs at a time" per WP:BEANS: it will become an entitlement to nominate 4 at a time, rather than a restriction!

Anyway, we're back to 1.6MB now, so lets see how soon action is needed again. I'm willing to do the untranscluding every 3-4 days, if you are willing to do the archiving! Sympathetic sigh, but more hopeful cheers, Geometry guy 21:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I worry about instruction creep, but perhaps something on it being a good idea to have a single model article up for PR, and solve the problems there first, then go on to other similar articles? Thanks for transcluding - I have been fairly involved in PRs for two of those (Fanny Imlay and List of National Historic Landmarks in New York). I am used to doing the PR script every two or three days, but perhaps I should pick a time of day and just archive every day then. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:24, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion pointer

A discussion on a unified reviewing system may be found at Wikipedia:Grand Unified Reviewing Discussion. — Thomas H. Larsen 08:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a backlog

in peer review archives. I have two articles I would like to nominate for FA but can't because they've spent the last two weeks with their peer reviews still active, even though no additions have been made in that time. Is this something to do with MelonBot's conversions? Serendi^podous 14:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the question. If you nominated an article for peer review and want to take it to FAC, then you are free to archive the PR discussion yourself. Geometry guy 15:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to make this more explicit in the guidelines, by adding that nominators can withdraw their own requests. However, in accordance with the spirit of the existing guidelines, I've suggested that this is not recommended for active discussions. Does that seem to be the right balance? Geometry guy 16:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems OK to me Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:09, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I would like to request a peer review

I would like to request a peer review on Peyton Manning so that I can get the article up to Featured Article standards. Given that my previous request for a peer review was completely ignored, and given that the peer reviews I requested for two other articles were also completely ignored, it appears that this whole process is a bit of a joke. When articles are being reviewed consistently, will some one please notify me on my talk page so that I can re-request a peer review and actually get some feedback for once? Thank you. Dlong (talk) 17:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I would not say it was completely ignored as it received a semi-automated peer review (SAPR), which might not be what you wanted, but had some useful suggestions. It appears that you ignored the suggestions as I just reran the SAPR script and several of them are still valid (and will need to be acted on to get it FA status). These were all in the original SAPR, and are still coming up now:

• Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 147 yards, use 147 yards, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 147&nbsp;yards.^[?]
• When writing standard abbreviations, the abbreviations should not have a 's' to demark plurality (for example, change kms to km and lbs to lb).
• Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at Wikipedia:Guide to layout.^[?]
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long – consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.^[?]
• This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, then an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.^[?]
• The script has spotted the following contractions: doesn't, can't, isn't, if these are outside of quotations, they should be expanded.

I know this can be frustrating, but have you tried asking one or two people from Wikipedia:Peer review/volunteers to look at it? I recently submitted a peer review, asked two volunteers, and got helpful comments from each. Oh, I see you have this at FAC already - good luck. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I will look over the list again, but the entries I have looked at did not apply. For instance, regarding the links - All dates linked are provided in the format [[Month date]], [[Year]]; exactly what Wikipedia:Context#Dates says to do. Regarding the contractions, a ctrl+f search for common contractions (shouldn't, couldn't, wouldn't, didn't, can't, isn't, I'll, I'd, let's, it's, we've, and we'd) only finds such words in the titles of referenced works or in exact quotations.

Dlong (talk) 02:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

• Since this is at FAC, specifically Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Peyton Manning I looked the article over and made some comments there. As you know, as soon as an article is at FAC, the FAC rules state its peer review must be closed. So if you are at FAC, you can't also request a peer review here simultaneously. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:27, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to support Dlong's frustration with the peer review I also requested a peer review of Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority and it was closed without a human review. I actually contacted one person on the volunteer's list (which BTW does not have an engineering/technology section of volunteers, making my choice difficult) and three different wikiprojects, as well as another rail article editor. I guess my frustration with this peer review project is that even unreviewed articles are archived after two weeks. This isn't the case with GA or FA nominations where they wait until someone reviews them. But it seems that wikipedia touts the peer review process as being an important part in the article improvement process, so maybe they shouldn't be archived until at least one person makes comments. I understand that this is an all-volunteer system, but the lack of feedback leaves me discouraged and unsure of how to proceed with the article I was working on. I am torn between giving up on this article and just going ahead and submitting it for FA review just to get some comments even if it isn't ready. Biomedeng (talk) 02:35, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

• Since you are not at FAC (see above) I reopened the peer review and left some comments. One problem we see everywhere is a lack of reviewers - WP:PR, WP:GAN, WP:FAC, WP:FLC, WP:FAR. As you see below this, there are so many requests on PR that unless we archive requests that have gotten no repsonses in the past two weeks, we run out of space and the PR becomes just a list (no details). This has happened this year. I know it is frustrating and try to help, but there are hundreds of requests and only so much any one person can do. I do think that if you pick an article you find interesting and make some comments there, then ask for comments in return it can't hurt and should help. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1851895 out of 2048000 bytes (196105 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 19:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it'd be nice for the bot to add the date to the section heading when posting these, just to stop table of contents clashes. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 19:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I am archiving Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The suggestion to add a date to the section title is good. I'll implement that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Kannada literature

I just listed this article for Peer review. It appears in the "General" category when it should be in the "Language and literature" category. Can someone explain why this happened? This needs to be corrected.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 20:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The original request did not specify a topic, so it was added to the "General" category. I fixed it just now, but it may take an hour or so to show up in the right place, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 21:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

One more issue. This article's talk page which has the peer review tag still says "Follow this link"... where as, it should be "A request has been made for this article ..." from where the reviewer could click on the request link to add comments.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 23:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I just looked at the article's talk page and it did not say that for me - maybe it is a case of WP:BYC? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Took two full days for my talk page to look ok. Never had this problem before. Thanks.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 15:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

What hinders this twice-nominated article from attaining Featured-Article status? Comments sought.

The article Ilaiyaraaja (a biography of a musician) was nominated twice in the past for Featured-Article status. Perhaps someone can take a quick, cursory look at this article, and provide brief points (in its talk page here) about what is needed further to make this article FA-quality. The group of editors working on this article are a bit dazed and confused about what more needs be done and would appreciate any of your input very much. Thank you. Regards, AppleJuggler (talk) 04:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• With all due respect, please submit a peer request like everyone else. I would look at the FAC comments and see if you have met the changes they asked for. Finally, I would also ask the users who weighed in on the FACs before to look at it again and see what they think. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. AppleJuggler (talk) 06:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Two more ideas for PR

I was wondering if two things could be done to help get more reviews for requests that have none. The first would be to add a suggestion to the instructions to review one or two other requests and then ask those whose requests you commented on to comment on yours. The second would be to add some sort of requests needing feedback section. Since requests are archived after 2 weeks, perhaps those that have had no responses in a week could be listed? There are similar notices at or for WP:FAC, WP:FLC, and WP:GAN and they seem to help there. What do you think? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of reviewing exchanges. One problem I had as a new visitor to the peer review area is that it is unclear what guidelines I should follow to review other articles. Articles nominated for Good Article status have a clear guideline on what to review the article on. So it was easy for me to review several articles there when I nominated an article. When I came here there are only general article formatting links, but no formal guideline on the areas to review an article. Thefore I did not review any other articles because I didn't know what criteria to review them on. Another issue I have with this setup is that at Good Article Nominations there is a numbered list of nominees. So there exists a clear order of reviewing. Here the list is not numbered and it seems articles are reviewd in an arbitrary order. There is no direction to give preference to the oldest requests. Also it seems page space is a continued issue at this project. Has there been any discussion of not trascluding the entire peer review onto the page? Maybe instead there could be simly a list here, along with a way to indicate peer reviews for which there are no comments, active discussions, and inactive discussions. Biomedeng (talk) 14:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I know User:Geometry guy will fix long peer reviews so that only part of them is transcluded on the page. I am not sure how easy this would be to do automatically. The problem with guidelines for peer review is that articles come in all stages of the writing process and on their way to different goals - some articles want a polish before WP:FAC, others are getting ready for WP:GAN and others are just looking for general improvement. I have also seen people expecting dispute resolution (not what PR is for) or reference desk help (I need more info / sources on this topic for the article...), neither of which is usually found here. I think for a Peer Review response, a quick read through of the article and some comments is best - if it is still pretty rough, point out major areas for improvement. If it is aiming for a particular goal, looking at the GA or FA or FL criteria and pointing out what the article still needs to do is helpful. It is often the case that you can make a few comments on several articles and see what the responses are - oddly, some PR requests never seem to acknowledge or respond to any feedback, so forget those. If they reply and make changes and you see more things to work on, jump in. Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

At present the technology isn't available to do automatically what I do by hand. I hope it will be available soon, for my sake :-) Geometry guy 20:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

A couple of comments on ordering. First, it has been traditional at PR to add new requests to the top: this is the opposite to the tradition at WP:GAN. One argument for this is that peer reviews do not have a definite outcome, and so it is more helpful to highlight new requests. In particular, there is no tradition that "oldest requests should be reviewed first", and I think such an approach would be counterproductive for peer reviews. We want to encourage anyone to review any peer review request at any time!!

The "newest first" order still holds within each section. However, the dates are not completely reliable during the transition. But if any reviewer would prefer to review oldest articles first, they should go to the bottom of the lists, not the top.

There are no definite criteria for reviewing here, since peer review is not something to "pass" or "fail": all comments aimed at improving the article are welcome. Geometry guy 20:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I was bold and added a requests needing feedback section. It lists only those with no responses in a week. I hate archiving peer reviews with no responses, maybe this will help. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Factual review

Participants in peer review may be interested in Wikipedia:Factual review and associated discussions. Best and friendly regards, — Thomas H. Larsen 08:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Requesting informal review for Eva Cassidy.

IP addresses can't create the new page needed for the peer review process. Please leave suggestions for improvement at Talk:Eva_Cassidy. Thanks.--165.21.154.93 (talk) 05:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• I ran the peer review script and left the review on the talk page. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I fixed the problems. It's now listed at Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations#Music--Onesixfivedottwoone (talk) 10:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Categories in table of contents example:Arts example:Everyday Life. Idea:contents categories style guide:peer reviews.

When was Literature not treated as one of the arts? Why is the Holywood film not listed as Arts although McFly the band and Shady records. Screenplays are screen... Arts. Again Enya is in General and Shady Records is in Arts. Yep there is a List of county routes in Rockland County, New York but its not in the Geography and places section it is in the General section. And there is an Everyday Life section therefore the table of contents is not only a guide to the list of peer reviews but is also a heap of shit. Maybe it's vandalised but 9 times of ten i'd have not looked at Everyday Life to find sport entries but for Old Trafford caught my eye. And now i see that its not a useful guide. Maybe whoever put in the categories to the contents had no suitable style guide with instructions how to list the categories or maybe the one there is up for review.

^Suggestion _

Peer Review : Peer Review Style guide (if such exists or creation)

And after a quick check I don't think that individual pages of a wikipedian fundamental nature have style guides or check lists ? Do they ? What are they called ?
ThisMunkey (talk) 09:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Literature is listed separately from Arts because otherwise the section would be too long. The classification follows closely the standard Wikipedia 1.0 classification.

Individual peer reviews are classified by their nominators, so if an article is in the General section it is because the nominator did not specify a topic. If it is the "wrong" place, it is because the nominator specified the "wrong" topic. If you took the time to read the instructions, before expressing your opinion, you would realise this. If you find a peer review in the wrong section, go to the peer review and edit it: look for {{Peer review page|topic=xxx}} and replace whatever xxx is with the correct topic.

I don't understand the last question, sorry. Geometry guy 10:13, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

At the top of this talk page the problem is being reviewed for votes but it only has three not including your own in as many months. I am not an administrator but I was surprised to see stuff categorised inconsistently on the administrators pages.
ThisMunkey (talk) 18:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Although they are including Media, vexillology, minerals and royalty. XDD. It's still good.ThisMunkey (talk) 18:41, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Questions

The instructions don't say how to add a topic parameter, and there are still several PRs listed here that are at FAC and where the article talk page says the PR is archived. I can no longer understand the instructions, so I don't know how to remove them or who is doing this, but for example, Ganymeded moon is at FAC, has been for days, and its talk page says the PR is archived. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Some additional instructions appear when you make a peer review request, and I've linked the {{Peer review page}} template now. Anyway, despite not understanding the instructions, it seems you followed them a few minutes later, correctly deducing that whoever tried to archive it before carried out step 2, but not step 1.

Check also WP:BYC, as this is sometimes an issue with static pages like this one. Geometry guy 09:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I have been doing a lot of the peer review archiving but have not been checking WP:FAC or WP:FLC. I would be glad to archive things if you leave a note here or I could start checking FAC more often. Sorry, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:11, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the instructions, and others don't either; I'm having to correct them. Also, when a PR is closed, it seems there is no link left back to the article (that is, the PR title isn't wikilinked), so I have to go through extra steps to get back to the talk page to correct. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

This is what the heading should look like when closed (including a link back to the same page isn't useful); the business of not having a link back to the article doesn't work. Editors often give up on PR and appear at FAC within a few days, as they get no feedback at PR. It would be great if something could be added to all the volume at the top of PR explaining to nominators that they need at least a month and they'll need to actively contact people for input. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe if I start adding a line like this, it will encourage them to stay longer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I added Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog to the top of the page to try and get reviews for articles at least a week old with no responses other than the semi-automated peer reviews (so far none of the articles listed has gotten reviewed, but I have only done it a few days). As for no links back to the article, I don't understand that. Here is the talk page for an article with a recently closed peer review: Talk:Skokiaan. The link leads to the closed review: Wikipedia:Peer review/Skokiaan/archive1 which has a link back to the article and to the article talk page at the top. Maybe Geometry guy can help with this. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

PS I just tweaked the instructions (which already mentioned the PR volunteers list twice) to add reviewing other PR requests and asking for reviews in return and clarifying the topic. We also just got the first no reviews yet request removed from the backlog. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me while I butt in... Is this topic not raised properly at the very top with no votes(or only three)?
ThisMunkey (talk) 22:04, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I am not sure what you are talking about - could you be more explicit please? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

ThisMunkey is referring to this thread, but might also want to check out this thread and this one. SandyGeorgia is referring to the fact that the level three section heading now links to the peer review page, not to the article. However, there is a link to the article immediately below the section heading. Geometry guy 09:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

PR Bugs?

1) Could someone please look at Wikipedia:Peer review/Gregory R. Ball/archive1? It had two article headers in it and I took one out and tried to fix the subheader on the comment, but now it does not show the comments at all when I edit it. Oh, I see, looking at my contributions I was editing Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Gregory R. Ball‎, which is somehow displayed with the first one. I am confused. Could someone please fix this (Geometry guy?). Thanks

2) I have noticed that a few PR requests keep changing their date - the most recent one is Wikipedia:Peer review/2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form/archive1 which was added Feb. 22, but is now showing up in order as if added on Feb. 29. The request for List of participating nations at the Summer Olympic Games did this too (as did the Winter Games one). I thought at first perhaps someone was removing the PR template and readding it to keep the request below the 2 week archive window, but the edit histories show no such thing. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:42, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Re (1), I noticed this too. This is a case of someone not following the instructions and transcluding a biography peer review onto a peer review page. I should have simply closed it as incorrectly listed, but wasn't quite in a grumpy enough mood :-)

Re (2), I think this may be because Carl hasn't turned on caching for subject specific peer reviews. Sometimes the Wikimedia software accidently removes and readds an item to a category: the cache protects the peer review dates against this, and against deliberate removal and readdition. I'll ask Carl to turn on caching. Geometry guy 09:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Re (1), I've now moved the SAPR notice to the Biography peer review page. Since the Biography peer review is still active, I didn't archive it, but deleted the copy at Peer review/Gregory R. Ball/archive1, so that this is free for the next (properly listed!) peer review. Geometry guy 11:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Previous PR

I've made a change to the templates so that peer reviews of articles which have had a previous peer review will automatically link to the previous peer review. This applies to new peer review requests only, not the current ones. This has been made possible thanks to the efforts of User:Happy-melon: however, the linked peer review may not be the immediately preceding one in rare cases. Please report such cases here.

Also, this kind of change is difficult to thoroughly test. Please report any errors or glitches here. Geometry guy 22:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Peer reviews by date

I sense that editors are divided on whether organising peer reviews by topic is a good thing, so I've set up an alternative page, WP:Peer reviews by date which lists all peer reviews together in chronological order. I hope this will also be useful the many editors :) who close PR discussions and provide semi-automated peer reviews. Geometry guy 22:23, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the mechanism for providing semi-automated peer review notices slightly. This was done so that they will display on the main peer review pages, not just the individual pages. I hope this makes it easier to see which articles have received SAPRs and which haven't. Geometry guy 13:20, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

We all thank you. AZPR and Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

:-) In return, can I ask all those who generously manage the archiving of multiple peer reviews to adapt their archiving to the page size. The latter information can be found by viewing the page source (in Firefox, the menu item is "Page Source" under "View"): go to the bottom of the source, and scroll upwards until you find something that looks like

<!--

NewPP limit report

Preprocessor node count: 25106/1000000

Post-expand include size: 1536103/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 126888/2048000 bytes

#ifexist count: 1/500

-->

The key issue for this page is the "Post-expand include size": this is the limit which we regularly are in danger of breaking. The above is current information for this page: as you can see, at 1.5MB, we are comfortably within the 2MB limit, but not very comfortably. If we get close to the limit, we need to archive very strictly, but as long as we are clear of the limit, we can be a bit more relaxed and give peer review requests a chance to receive responses. I mention this because it has been noted at FAC that there has been an increase in nominations with an empty peer review. Thanks, Geometry guy 20:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have noticed the pink "PR Requests over a week old without a response" box seems to have helped, mostly thanks to User:Biomedeng, but I still archive one or two blank PR requests a day on average. I have also thought about adding a notice to the blank ones when they turn a week old to ask for a review from the volunteers. I must admit I use (oh, the shame. the shame) IE. How do I do the size trick there? Also when you have the only partial transclusion trick, I just archive those with the code intact - is that OK? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no need for shame: you are very brave to use IE! I had a quick look and I believe there should be a "Page" menu immediately above the web page and on the right. Inside this menu you should find "View source": that's what you want. As for the partial transclusion trick, yes, just archive with the code intact: it reduces the chance that the monthly archive will break (February broke, sadly). Geometry guy 22:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

As for IE, I think it is a case of fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Thanks for the tip. Archiving and SAPRs should be less time consuming from a chronological list. I discovered yesterday I had accidentally put all the SAPRs I ran on Feb 18 in the January 2008 SAPR page (which is why a bunch of people asked where the SAPR for their request was). I moved them from Jan to Feb - hope this did not break things. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

There were some glitches this am, but I fixed them :-) Geometry guy 23:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

(←) Updating the urgent pink box, archiving, and SAPR went much faster this time with the chronological list. I added it to the instructions too. I am happy to report that I did not have to archive any "no responses" this time, although I did discover two requests that were much older than I thought (one from Feb. 7 I already had listed as Feb. 22 from searching the "Added on..." at the bottom before caching. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I've shaved 300-400KB off the page size with some template tweaks, and the current size is about 1.5MB. Geometry guy 22:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I had three "no repsonses" from Feb. 22nd to let them go a little longer. Is that OK spacewise - I am not able to check this in IE. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:41, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Currently very comfortable at under 1.4MB. Geometry guy 23:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Template won't work

I made this edit but nothing appeared on the talk page. I would appreciate any help. Thanks. Dr.K. (talk) 00:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I've started you off on the right track. Please read the instructions. I'd be grateful to know why you were led to believe that placing the {{peer review page}} template on the article talk page was the right thing to do. If the instructions are unclear, we need to clarify them. Geometry guy 00:08, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I went here: Then I followed the instructions here:

Nomination procedure

Anyone can request peer review. Users submitting new requests are encouraged to review an article from those already listed, and :encourage reviewers by replying promptly and appreciatively to comments.

To add a nomination:

1. Add {{subst:PR}} to the top of the article's talk page and save it, creating a peer review notice to notify other editors of the review.

What went wrong? Dr.K. (talk) 00:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I think I know what happened. I copied the wrong template, three lines down: ({{Peer review page|topic= X}}). Dr.K. (talk) 00:38, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Moral of the story: Don't fight vandals at the same time as you nominate articles. Sorry for putting you through the added work. Dr.K. (talk) 08:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Government of Kerala

Government of Kerala - I added "{subst:PR}" link in the talk pg. But I didn't see the peer riview discussion page. Please assist.

--Avinesh Jose  T  05:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I think its working now. Is there any additional steps? --Avinesh Jose  T  05:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Can an article be on PR and GAN simultaneously?

I understand that an article cannot be on PR and FAC simultaneously, or on FAC and GAN simultaneously. However, can an article be on PR and GAN simultaneously? If I nominate an article at GAN, given the current backlog, I would have to wait at least a month for it to be reviewed. The average peer review lasts about two weeks; by placing an article on PR and GAN simultaneously, it will take me less time to get articles to GA status. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 07:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

See the discussion at WT:GAN. Short answer (in my view): yes. Geometry guy 10:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Is there something wrong?

I have put up Sitakunda Upazila for a second peer review. But, the link on the talk page isn't leading to the right page. I am pretty sure that I have botched up the process somewhere. Can someone help? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 11:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is my best guess at what you did: you edited the article talk page to add {{subst:PR}} and then clicked on "Show preview". You then followed the link to create Wikipedia:Peer review/Sitakunda Upazila/archive2 without saving the article talk page. You then created the peer review page and saved it. Then you returned to the article talk page and saved that. Is that right?

The problem is that {{subst:PR}} is programmed to look for the next free peer review page, and when you saved it, Wikipedia:Peer review/Sitakunda Upazila/archive2 was no longer free! :-) So it wanted you to start another peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/Sitakunda Upazila/archive3 :-)

I've fixed it now anyway and will see if I can clarify the instructions. Geometry guy 15:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 13, 19:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1860714 out of 2048000 bytes (187286 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 23:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

• I archived through March 1, except for no responses (want to get something for those) Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:04, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 15, 15:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1851964 out of 2048000 bytes (196036 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 19:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

• I archived as of March 3rd. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

A new proposal: all PR requests get a response

I would like to propose that no peer review request go unanswered. In the past many requests have been archived with no response (except for a semi-automated peer review (SAPR)). There is now a list of peer review requests which are at least one week old that have had no response beyond a SAPR at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog. This has averaged two to three unanswered requests each day over the past few weeks.

The good news is that, starting with requests from February 22, no PR request has been archived without at least some response. I have also started to leave a note on the talk page of each editor who made an unanswered request when that request is added to the week-old list. The note suggests they ask a PR volunteer for feedback or review another article and ask for a review in return.

More help reviewing the PR requests without a response is needed - so far Biomedeng and I have reviewed the bulk of the requests on the no replies list, along with others. I next plan to leave a note on the talk page of each PR volunteer asking each to do one or two reviews from the no replies list each month. Other reviews and ideas are always welcome. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

An excellent idea, I know from experience that getting a requested peer review going unanswered beyond the automated can be very disheartening. SGGH ^speak! 11:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, good idea. I'll try to do what I can and I am sure others will as well. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll try to do one or two every once in a while. Juliancolton ^{(St. Patrick's day)} 12:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I can help with this. Thanks for taking it on. Let's also remember that there are many PRs for various WikiProjects. But I suppose they are the responsibility of those projects? – Scartol • Tok 12:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm in. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. A personal experience: I reviewed an archived peer-review some days ago, and the nominator was still watching it. Of course, the proposal here will not resolve the backlog problem.--Yannismarou (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a great idea in principal but those editors on the participants list are already adding reviews. Some of those articles wouldn't get reviews if we didn't add them. But I applaud your efforts and idea. If more volunteers are added then I'm sure there is far more chance to ensure no request goes unanswered. Peanut4 (talk) 15:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

{unindent)Thanks for all the responses and reviews to date. Peer Review will be featured in the Dispatches section of the next Wikipedia Weekly, so I am hoping we will get some more volunteer reviewers that way. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

• I will try to participate as well. Can a bot remind me please? :) Awadewit (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks Awadewit, FYI, Krator has proposed a bot below. If I see a PR request that fits your interests I'll let you know for now. :-) Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who has helped out - the backlog is down to only three articles. I have taken the liberty of also reviewing (or just now adding one) requests which only had a very brief response. For example, I just added Aliens (film) to the list as it had a one sentence PR. Is this OK? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:17, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

"all peer reviews get a response" idea #2

Thanks to Ruhrfisch's note on my talk page (ty), I remember to post this old idea here. What would really help with getting responses is a more individually tailored request to Peer Review volunteers. So, the idea is as follows, stated simply:

• When a new peer review is posted, a bot looks for some clues as to categories the page belongs to (by following category trees on the page, or by looking at WikiProject tags, or maybe a category assigned by the requester). Perhaps some fancy algorithm that could combine the three.
• All users who are volunteering in the corresponding category get a talk page notice from the bot with a link to the review.

Preventing talk page spam can be done easily by narrowing down categories and not volunteering everywhere. User:Krator (t c) 20:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

When requesting a peer review, a category can be specified (the ten WP 1.0 cats are used), so requests are already categorized and most are not in the "General" category. I am clueless as to writing bots - perhaps someone who knows how to could assess the feasibility of this idea? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 16, 19:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1918379 out of 2048000 bytes (129621 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 23:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

• With more requests receiving reviews, I think we are getting fuller (law of unintended consequences). I will switch the archive limit to 10 days with no responses, instead of two weeks. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 16, 23:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1860932 out of 2048000 bytes (187068 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 03:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

• Not sure what else to do - am archiving after one week of inactivity and changing directions to reflect this. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

  My only suggestion would be that maybe Peer Review should be split into its separate sections. It has its cons as well as pros though. Peanut4 (talk) 04:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Geometry guy might have some ideas - can also do the partial transclusion trick on long PRs but I am not 100% sure how to do that. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

    There are less than 100 articles at peer review at the moment, and none of them are huge, so peer review shouldn't be full, which suggests something is accidentally inflating the page size. I think the culprit may be the semi-automated peer review notices. I've slightly reduced the overhead they cause, but this may need a rethink. Geometry guy 10:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

    • The other idea I had is just that doing all PR requuests will take more space as a PR with some comments will be larger than one without. On the 19th and 20th I will start to archive requests that were at least a week old before they got a PR - it may be there is a glut there (I have done a lot lately) and as these get more evenly distributed through the system with time they will be less of a problem. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Keywords

Hi. The preloaded intro for creating peer review subpages gives a list of the following keywords: "arts, langlit, everydaylife, philrelig, socsci, geography, history, engtech, math, natsci". While it is possible to figure out what some of them mean, others are not so easy. Would it be possible to add an explanation of the keywords and their meanings? Also, and uncategorised option would be useful. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 08:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• I added explanations to the non-obvious ones, as well as clarifying that uncategorized requests go into the "General" topic. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:00, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Automating archiving?

Since automation is going so well, I wondered about the next logical step. I have been archiving the Peer Review requests and it takes me anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour each day. I would rather spend this time doing actual peer reviews and the semi-automated peer reviews. I must also admit I do not always check WP:FAC or WP:FLC to see if any peer reviews need to be closed because they are also listed there. Would it be possible to automate the peer review process? It would need to both archive/close the peer review and change the notice on the article's talk page. It would have to check that the peer review request had had no responses in the current time limit (now the past week), and close requests more than a month old. The bot would also need to check FAC and FLC and close reviews of articles listed there too. Is this feasible? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Automatic archiving of peer reviews is certainly possible along the lines you suggest. If an interface with FAC and FLC is needed, then the obvious person to ask is Gimmetrow. Alternatively, we could put out a general bot request. I could help with specifying precisely what the bot needs to do, and there are one or two others I could ask, but there is no guarantee that we can find someone willing to oversee a bot automating some of the archiving, as it does require some work. Geometry guy 22:36, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Bots are a bit of a mystery to me - I thought it might be more like Misza bot archiving talk pages (although someone has to run Misza bot too). Thinking about it, if all the bot did was archive the easy ones (over X days old with no repsonse - currently X = 8 days, but I am trying to work back to 10 days before archiving), then I could still do the over a month old requests and those at FAC and FLC by hand (there are relatively few of these). So could we try just the "easy" ones? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no mystery: Bots can download the same information from WP that editors can. So a bot could download the edit history from a peer review page. It would be fairly easy to check from this whether the peer review page had been edited in the last X days. It would also be easy to check if the peer review page was more than a month old. Misza bot is more complicated because it checks how old is each thread! This means the bot needs to read the entire talk page and check each thread for signatures and dates: that is hard.

Anyway, the key point is that once a bot has decided to close a PR discussion, it needs to do it, i.e., make the edits to the peer review page and the article talk page. As a minimum we need someone who has experience with bots which make such edits. Geometry guy 00:00, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Education section volunteer list

Is there any problem with me adding an education section to the volunteer list? I would be willing to help and I am sure there would be others from WP:Universities. Thanks. KnightLago (talk) 19:45, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

• First off, we always need volunteers, so thanks very much. However, the volunteer list is now organized in the same ten categories as the Peer Review list itself, see Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Categorizing_PR above. Education is not one of the ten categories, so I would not add it as a new section. Where do you think it would fit best in the exissting scheme (which is based on the WP 1.0 hierarchy)? The idea is that someone comes to peer review, adds their request and categorizes it in a section, and then looks for volunteer reviewers in the same section of the volunteer list. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:27, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I don't know. I guess I would have been in the minority that favored the FA categories. What is WP 1.0? I am sure this has been debated but it seems that it would be easier to get more people to participate with more specific categories. In my case I would have signed up for Education and I am sure I could have gotten others from the Wikiproject to do so as well. I looked through the categories you are using and I am not sure where I would fit, any suggestion? KnightLago (talk) 20:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I am no expert, but Social sciences and society seems to be the closest fit for me - I would not have a problem with adding {includes Education) to the volunteer list heading. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good. It looks like there is already someone there for schools so education doesn't seem like a huge leap. If you would add to the heading, I will sign up and try and recruit some other people from WP:UNI. Also, what exactly is WP 1.0? Thanks for the help. KnightLago (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and added myself and WP:UNI under social sciences. I think that should suffice. I will try and recruit some others. Still curious, WP 1.0? Thanks. KnightLago (talk) 21:44, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I added a note to WP:UNI here. I also answered the WP 1.0 question. Thanks. KnightLago (talk) 22:05, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry - I was away from my computer for several hours, looks like you took care of everything fine. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Two week archival and changes that haven't yielded improvement

"Peer review requests that have received no feedback beyond a semi-automated peer review in two weeks are archived." Peer reviews historically ran for a month; it takes a month to get a decent peer review, and most peer reviews are showing up at FAC empty. This change was apparently instituted at the same time that the complexity of this page grew to accommodate the new sectioning, and as far as I can tell from what's appearing at FAC, none of it has resulted in change for the better (as in increased participation at PR). The page is cluttered, hard to negotiate, and because of the increased code needed to manage the more complex page, peer reviews are closed too quickly. This should be undone, and PRs should run for a month as they used to. These changes have not been for the better, one-month peer reviews should be allowed, and an evaluation of the changes resulting in shorter peer reviews is in order. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

What ingratitude to all the work that Ruhrfisch does to look after the archiving of peer reviews. And impatience and ignorance too. Peer reviews still run for a month. They are only closed if they receive absolutely no comments for two weeks, and even then not always. I have already drawn attention to the issue of closing peer reviews too soon, and it has been taken on board by Ruhrfisch, who takes special care to let empty discussions run for longer in the hope of getting a response, even to the extent of reviewing them himself. Please wait for these generous efforts to filter through.

Since you commissioned and presumably read a dispatch on peer review, you should know full well that the problem is caused by increased participation. It has absolutely nothing to do with the sectioning of the page, which requires no complex code and adds hardly any overhead.

And given that you are someone who even removes blank parameters from templates (how pointless is that? - someone might want to fill them in later!) I consider a statement from you that the page is cluttered to be a sign that it is serving the needs of Wikipedia very well. Use WP:Peer reviews by date if you don't like the sections. I can only speculate that your comment reflects stress or frustration on or off wiki. If so, I hope things get better for you. Geometry guy 20:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch replies

I think you both raise some valid points - while Sandy is correct that peer reviews are now archived sooner than they were in the past, Geometry guy is correct that I am now closing almost all of the peer review requests, and do allow "no response" reviews to go longer if needed. I will respectfully disagree with Sandy (and agree with G guy), in that I believe there have been a lot of improvements recently in the peer review process.

As recently as July 2007, peer review was declared "dead" on its talk page - see this. It has also long been the case that many requests received no reply at all, beyond the semi-automated peer reviews (SAPR) (which I have done all of for some months, taking over from AndyZ). My rationale for doing SAPRs was that everyone got something, but that was not a substitute for a real review.

Recently PR has had several changes which have improved it greatly. The sorting by topic, introduction of the peer review volunteer list (also sorted by topic), and a new template greatly increased participation. As noted, there is still a list of PR requests sorted by date (at wp:pr/d) for those who prefer the old style listing.

What has not been explicitly mentioned is that I have not archived a single peer review request made since since February 22nd with no response. Let me say this again: every peer review request started since Feb. 22nd that I have closed has received both a SAPR and a human response. At first I did this by myself, but others helped and on March 15th I made a new proposal: all PR requests get a response. it has been a success and thanks to it and a new backlog list and the help of many editors (especially The Rambling Man, Biomedeng, and SGGH) we currently are listing PR requests that have received no response in the backlog list after three days - so today those 6 PR requests only went three days without a human reply.

Now I believe that this has had some unintended consequences, mostly that the peer review page is getting bigger (it used to be there were 2 or 3 unanswered PR request each day on average - but they took little room). When PR gets too full, it breaks and looks like this (only a list of titles) or worse (only a link to the Veblenbot page). As a result I have started archiving sooner than we used to. Here I switched it to 10 days, and here to 1 week. I have been trying to let it get back to 10 days before archiving, but it is not there yet. PR is also very busy - there were 13 new PR requests made on Thursday March 27, 2008, 17 new requests on Wednesday March 26, and 9 new requests on Tuesday March 25 (if I counted right, that is 39 new requests in three days - for comparison, right now FAC has a total of 39 nominations).

I will also say that any editor can archive a PR request and some do so before getting a response (I know Navenby was archived after less than a week), so is it possible, Sandy, that what you are seeing is impatient editors who are closing their PR requests themselves much sooner than a month (or perhaps even a week)? Or are these requests which were closed with no response before the new drive to give every PR request an answer? Can you please provide some example links to FAC noms without a PR reply Sandy?

For whatever reason, a lot of PR requests never get a reply from the original nominator - not now when they are closed earlier or before when they were closed at most after a month.

Finally, I know that Sandy and Geometry guy both work extremely hard here for the good of the project. Perhaps there was too much focusing on each of their areas of concern (FAC and PR) without acknowledging the valid concerns of the other. I hope this clarifies my views here and that there are no hard feelings anywhere. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I checked and User:Allen3 used to do "Archive of peer review requests that have received no new responses in last two weeks" diff from Nov. 2007 and diff from March 2007. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:00, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The archiving after two weeks of inactivity actually began on 1 July 2005, with the discussion to add the archiving criteria located here. --Allen3 ^talk 11:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Kannada literature in Vijayanagara empire

I nominated this article for peer review choosing the correct category (arts.langlit), yet the article appears in "general" category. Can someone point out how to move this to the "language and Literature" category of PR articles? thanks.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 13:06, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• It has to be either arts or langlit, so I made it just langlit. It may take up to an hour for the bot to put it in the right category. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:03, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 28, 18:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1852400 out of 2048000 bytes (195600 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 22:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I've "onlyincluded" the longest four peer reviews, and the post-expand size is back down to 1.66MB. Geometry guy 00:00, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 29, 21:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1866448 out of 2048000 bytes (181552 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 01:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

• I am going to archive - I let it get to 10 days, but now it is too full. I tried to do the inlcude only trick that G guy does on Facebook's pr, but it did not work. Sorry Sandy. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

  You missed out the "onlyinclude" at the very beginning. I'll do this with a few later today. Geometry guy 10:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Tel Aviv

Ive renominated Tel Aviv for PR and its gone to the archive page for the new review. Thanks. Flymeoutofhere (talk) 08:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

That's normal and the review has been listed. See the instructions. The old semi-automated peer review has been included because there is only one semi-automated peer review per month. Geometry guy 10:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I ran a second one, which is higher in the page so it is linked now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:54, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Mar 31, 23:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1855155 out of 2048000 bytes (192845 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 03:46, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• I am working on this Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 01, 23:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1895689 out of 2048000 bytes (152311 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 03:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• I did the partial transclusion trick and it is under 185K for now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 02, 07:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1895687 out of 2048000 bytes (152313 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 11:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• After partial translcusion trick it is back to 179kb Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:01, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 02, 21:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1848331 out of 2048000 bytes (199669 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 01:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

• I have archived and will do the partial transclusion trick for one next. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 04, 10:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1867576 out of 2048000 bytes (180424 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 14:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• I will do partial transclusion on some of the largest PR requests next Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 05, 20:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1861490 out of 2048000 bytes (186510 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 00:48, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

• Archived as of March 23, will do partial transclusion next if needed. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Query

I can't see this answered anywhere, but is it possible to have more than one article at PR at once? Obviously, I would in turn do more than one PR. It's not a big deal either way, I was more curious than anything. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• There is no rule against it, and there are currently several editors with more than one PR request (one person recently nominated 10 in one day and has yet to reply to any of the PRs, let alone do any reviews - see free rider problem ;-) ). Thanks for your work and reviews and for asking, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! Wow! Service! Ealdgyth - Talk 02:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Space warnings

I noticed VeblenBot has been making a lot of warnings here. If there is anything I can do to help, let me know. Maybe the bot could automatically switch large pages to the partially-transcluded method?

I have been poking around to see if we can get mediawiki changes to simplify the process, but they don't look like they will happen soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 07, 20:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1853014 out of 2048000 bytes (194986 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 00:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• I archived Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 08, 16:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1929598 out of 2048000 bytes (118402 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 20:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)