Wikipedia:New pages patrol/School

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The New Page Review training program is designed to help new or inexperienced users who wish to assist with maintenance tasks to understand the basic principles of reviewing new pages on Wikipedia, and to provide one-on-one help in the use of the New Pages Feed and its curation toolbar.

Experienced Wikipedians (or trainers in this instance) can "adopt" newer users, mentoring them along the way as they learn how to review new pages. It is hoped that this program will be able to inform new users about the ins and outs of deletion and notability and steer them away from making errors in the use of the tools and tags. If you are looking to contribute to Wikipedia but do not intend to remain active on New Page Review, then this program is probably not for you.

Users who are less experienced, but who would still like to help maintain the quality of the encyclopedia, might like to consider Patrolling Vandalism instead – an essential function that requires less knowledge of Notability Guidelines and Deletion. For training on counter-vandalism, see WP:CVUA.



  1. Check that you have already made sufficient mainspace edits (generally around 500) and that you have addressed any previous advice or warnings about your general editing.
  2. Read WP:NPP first, and then all the pages in the section Further reading below.
  3. Go through the Curation Tool tutorial and its video.
  4. Find a user who is in your time zone and leave a message on their talk page to request training. If you don't receive a reply within 48 hours, please choose another trainer.

Participation

Students

Learning about reviewing new pages is easy and fun. If you'd like an experienced user to show you how, simply choose an active trainer from the list who is in your time zone and leave a message on their talk page. Your chosen trainer should share your interests so that they can comfortably assist you while you learn under their tutelage. For more information on what you will be expected to learn, first visit the pages at WP:NPP and WP:DELETION.

Trainers

If you are an experienced user and have time to devote to being a trainer, visit the Trainers' resources section where you will find the minimum requirement for trainers, recommended practice, and teaching suggestions and examples. You may then wish to add yourself to the list of active trainers taking note of the page source comments.

Goals

If you're new or inexperienced, before embarking on a New Page Review training program, you should be able to demonstrate that you have already mastered the basic principles of editing the encyclopedia and contributed at least 500 edits to MAINSPACE.

When you have shown through training that you have mastered the principles of New Page Review and can apply them with accuracy, and are able to communicate correctly and effectively with new users of all kinds you will be contributing to what is one of the most important maintenance tasks on Wikipedia, while understanding that speed alone is not essential – the target is accuracy. When you have achieved these goals, you can display the User New Page Patrol userbox on your user page.

Syllabus

Syllabus

Notability

Wikipedia policy and guidelines

Communication

  • Discussions with creators of new pages
    • Automated notifications and when to manually notify/discuss
    • Tone, clarity, and knowledge in discussions
    • Wikilove/positive comments
  • Warning templates

Deletion

Reviewing procedures

  • Improvement Tagging
  • Categorizing
  • Stub sorting
  • Use of the flow chart and other reviewing guides
  • Scripts for reviewing use/ease

Graduation criteria

The successful NPP School Graduate will be able to:

  • Successfully use the NPP flowchart, or other system, to arrive at a correct reviewing outcome 90% or more of the time
  • Accurately identify when an article has satisfied the GNG
  • Accurately identify appropriate SNG claims in an article
  • Accurately evaluate articles against specific SNG criteria
  • Find and accurately apply common Wikipedia practices when evaluating notability
  • Differentiate between spam, vandalism, nonsense, and foreign language articles
  • Identify and appropriately remedy copyright issues in at least 90% of instances
  • Understand, explain, and apply appropriate Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines including, but not limited to, BLP and COI
  • Engage in appropriate and useful conversations with other editors about NPP
  • Appropriately apply warning templates to users
  • Know when to appropriately nominate an article for deletion, including how to have done a BEFORE search
  • Know when and how to use PROD and BLPPROD
  • Know when and how to soft delete an article
  • Use the Speedy Deletion criteria with at least 90% accuracy
  • Apply appropriate tags to article with at least 90% accuracy
  • Understand NPP procedures and norms
  • Correctly and efficiently use scripts while doing new page patrol
List of available trainers

Available trainers

List of former/inactive trainers
Trainers' resources (for trainers only)

Example curriculums

Tips

  • Set up a subpage in the trainer's userspace. One page per student.
  • Add the questions to the subpage in small groups, wait for the student to finish them, grade them, then add the next group.
  • Templates such as checkY {{Tick}}, checkY {{Yellow tick}}, and ☒N {{Cross}} are great for grading.
  • Be on the lookout for plagiarism. Old NPP school pages are public unless deleted, and students sometimes read them and paraphrase the answers.
  • The idea of "deletion quotas" (any exercises involving X number of CSDs/AFDs/draftifications) is controversial and has been discussed negatively at RFA before.
  • The NPP Discord server is available if you want to have text chat, voice chat, and/or screen sharing with a student.

Essential further reading

The Teahouse
An area where friendly Wikipedians will answer your questions.

Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Academy
A similar program for beginners to learn how to countering vandalism.

IconAdopt-a-User
A mentorship program for new users who are interested in learning more about Wikipedia.

Uses material from the Wikipedia article Wikipedia:New pages patrol/School, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.