User talk:Joe Roe


Retired
This user is no longer active on Wikipedia.

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

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Hello Joe Roe,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

  • There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
  • Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
  • Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
  • This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

TFA

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New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

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Hello Joe Roe,

New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

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Hello Joe Roe,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

Welcome to the drive!

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Welcome, welcome, welcome Joe Roe! I'm glad that you are joining the drive! Please, have a cup of WikiTea, and go cite some articles.

CactiStaccingCrane (talk)15:38, 2 February 2024 UTC [refresh]via JWB and Geardona (talk to me?)

The Signpost: 29 January 2026

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Women in Red February 2026

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Women in Red | February 2026, Vol 12, Issue 2, Nos 358, 359, 361, 362, 363


Online events:

Announcements from other communities

  • Join Wikipedia:26 for '26 and create or substantially improve twenty-six Wikipedia
    articles during the year 2026, at least one for each letter of the English alphabet.

Tip of the month:

  • Our redlists are a great resource, but not every redlinked subject is notable. Be sure to research before starting a new article.

Other ways to participate:

Instagram | Pinterest

--Lajmmoore (talk 22:48, 31 January 2026 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - February 2026

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Delivered February 2026 by MediaWiki message delivery.
If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

13:29, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Farewell for now

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Hi all. As some of you might have noticed, I have not been active here for more than a year. That wasn’t a planned departure—at some point I just lost the motivation to keep editing—but it seems to be a permanent change, and because the English Wikipedia community has been a part of my life for two decades now, I wanted to say a proper goodbye. As I said, I didn’t consciously decide to leave, but if I were to boil down the reasons I did to one thing, it’s that while I still believe that editing Wikipedia is one of the most impactful, liberating scholarly activities a person can do, the effort it takes to make a lasting contribution—either to encyclopaedic content or behind-the-scenes policy—has become unsustainable for me at this point in my life. I am not closing the door forever, but I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.

Thank you for the collaboration, the companionship, and most of all for teaching me so much. I did not achieve all the things I wanted to (far from it), but I did some of them, and I’m proud of those. I won’t be checking my talk page in the future so if you want to get in touch, email is best. Otherwise, keep up the good work! – Joe (talk) 09:08, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your work here Joe. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 09:40, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
All the best, Joe, and thank you for your efforts! Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:51, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to see you go Joe, although "just not really having the time anymore" is a good note to end on : ). You've done invaluable work as a functionary and helped set the stage for the new era of anti-UPE work and the culture of the site... even when I couldn't agree with you at all, I was always interested to read your take on things. KIT! Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 19:56, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Chiming in to say you have made great contributions to Wikipedia and will be missed. i agree your reason is a good note to end with. Doug Weller talk 20:11, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]