Wikipedia:Peer review/Tools

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Barnstar

There is a barnstar to thank editors who have made a significant contribution to peer review, or who have contributed a high quality peer review. To use the barnstar, copy and paste the following onto an editor's talk page: {{subst:Peer review barnstar}}. This will generate the following:

		The Peer Review Barnstar
		For your excellent contributions to Wikipedia peer review, I present to you the peer review barnstar. Nice work! ~~~~

To celebrate an editor who has contributed a great peer review, copy and paste the following, and then include the article's name: {{subst:Peer review barnstar|review=ARTICLENAME}}. For example, {{subst:Peer review barnstar|review=Anatomy}} will generate:

		The Peer Review Barnstar
		For your excellent peer review of Anatomy, I present to you the peer review barnstar. Nice work! ~~~~

In both examples, the compliment can be changed if required, for example: {{subst:Peer review barnstar|description=stellar}} will generate:

		The Peer Review Barnstar
		For your stellar contributions to Wikipedia peer review, I present to you the peer review barnstar. Nice work! ~~~~

Userbox

Copying {{Wikipedia peer reviewer|N}} to your talk page produces :

This editor has contributed to N peer reviews on Wikipedia.

For volunteers, adding {{Peer review volunteer}} to your user page produces:

This editor is a volunteer at Wikipedia peer review. I can help at your peer review! (learn more)

Welcome

To welcome a user, copy {{Peer review/welcome}} to their talk page. This produces:

Welcome, and thank you for offering to help with Peer Reviews, and for adding your name to our volunteer list. You don't need to be an expert writer or subject specialist to help out. Just get stuck in and leave whatever constructive suggestions you can for the person requesting the review. Many people just want a second opinion, so you really don't need a detailed knowledge of Featured Article criteria or even Good article criteria to contribute constructively. If you'd like assistance or support from another reviewer, just leave a question on our Discussion page Hint: One good way to begin contributing is to look at the list of Unanswered reviews and see if any interest you; another is to look through one of the reviews already started on the Main List and see if you can add anything further that other reviewers might have missed. Maybe now or later on you will feel able to add your name to subject areas on our volunteer list. This helps those who want a review to contact individual volunteers directly to ask for their input. Good luck - the peer review team

Shortcuts

The following shortcuts are used to represent the peer review process:

• WP:PR pointing to the main page
• WT:PR and WT:REVIEW to the main talk page
• WP:PRL pointing to the list of full reviews
• WP:PRG and WP:PR/Instructions pointing to the list of instructions
• WP:PRV pointing to the list of volunteers

Edit notices

Edit notices are displayed to editors who are making edits on these pages:

• on main peer review page (to warn editors who want to directly put their review there): {{Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Peer review}}
• on the list of unanswered reviews (for the same reason): {{Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Peer review/List of unanswered reviews}}
• on the unanswered reviews sidebar (to instruct editors how to do this): {{Editnotices/Page/Template:Peer_review/Unanswered_peer_reviews_sidebar}}

Documentation

Templates used in the peer review process are listed here:

The documentation page for the template set is here: Template:CF/doc

Review list

To transclude the review list onto new pages:

1. To transclude all reviews, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=transclude}}
2. To transclude a readable list of entries, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=list}}
3. To transclude entries in raw form, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=raw}}

When a review is created

Editors request a peer review by putting {{subst:PR}} onto an article's talk page. The template displays a choice of topics for the review which the user can choose from. Clicking on a topic will create a new page for the review. The new page is preloaded based on the article's topic from templates {{Peer review/preload1}} to {{Peer review/preload10}}

These templates create a review by including {{subst:Peer review/subst}}, {{Peer review page|topic=X}}, and some text. "Subst" uses subtemplates to:

• Generates links to the article, its talk page, and a past review with {{Peer review links}}, which in turn utilises {{Al}}
• Provides links to tools via {{Peer review tools}}
• Adds the peer review page to a category formatted "Month Year peer reviews" (eg. Category:March 2015 peer reviews)

How reviews are displayed

The page for the peer review is added to a category via {{Peer review page}}, which is included on every review page. Based on the short name of the topic (eg 'langlit') the page is added to a category relating to the topic. The category is named based on the topic's full title (eg. 'Language and literature peer reviews'). This is done via the template {{Peer review/Topic}}.

A bot called AnomieBOT (operated by Carl) automatically creates a page listing all the reviews in each category. Reviews are listed in a unique format. Each review is recorded chronologically alongside the alongside the name of the item , its namespace number, and a timestamp indicating when it was added to the category. Reviews are formatted according to {{PRentry}}. The short name, long name, category and listing are displayed below.

Displaying a human-readable list of reviews

The list of reviews is then transcluded onto a page in a human-readable format. The full list, separated by subject area, is fully transcluded at: Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews. A parameter called 'mode' can be used to set the format of how reviews display.

1. If 'mode' is set to 'transclude', all reviews will be displayed in full. As of 2014^[update], this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer review/Current
2. If 'mode' is set to 'list', all reviews will be displayed by name, with a list of links to the review, the article and talk page, and an invitation to watch the page. As of 2014^[update], this is the default setting for reviews and can be seen at Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews
3. If 'mode' is set to 'raw', or any other value is used, all reviews will be displayed only by their name and the date and time they were added. As of 2014^[update], this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date

Example

1. An editor transcludes {{Peer review}} onto a page and clicks 'Language & Literature'.
2. A new page is created for the review based on {{Peer review/preload4}} and preloaded with headings based on {{subst:Peer review/subst}}.
3. The article is added to the category Category:Language and literature peer reviews.
4. AnomieBOT adds the page to a list of all language reviews here: User:AnomieBOT/C/Language and literature peer reviews.
5. These reviews are then transcluded on peer review main page and displayed to the end user.

How a review is closed

When a review is closed, two things happen:

1. On the article's talk page, an editor replaces {{Peer review}} with {{Old peer review|archive = N}}. This changes the statement on the talk page to tell other editors and readers the peer review is closed. It also adds the talk page to Category:Old requests for peer review.
2. On the peer review page, the editor replaces {{Peer review page|topic = X}} with {{Closed peer review page}}. This removes the review from the category of active reviews of a topic.

Updating the monthly archive

From February 2015, links to archived peer reviews are provided in category form at Wikipedia:Peer review/Archive. To update the archive for this month:

1. Create the category Category:October 2026 peer reviews
2. Add a link to the category on the archive page: "* [[:Category:October 2026 peer reviews|October]]"

Troubleshooting: The peer review page is listed as a peer review

It happens from time to time that the peer review page is placed in one of the categories for articles under peer review. This causes the peer review page to list itself as a peer review, which is obviously not a good thing (thankfully, the servers do not admit infinite regress, and simply give up trying to display content).

There are several ways this can happen, but they usually involve an individual peer review placing itself in a peer review category, without surrounding this category by "noincludes". Since the review is transcluded on the peer review page, the category gets added to the peer review page too.

To find the culprit, visit the AnomieBOT page corresponding to the topic under which the entire peer review page is listed, and look for strange entries. The entry immediately below the mess is likely to be the cause of the problem.

Troubleshooting: "Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full"

Wikipedia has a limit to how much information can be transcluded onto a page. That is called the post-expand size. This takes into account the reviews that are transcluded and anything that is transcluded onto the review pages (... and anything transcluded onto those pages, and so on). When the post-expand size is about to be reached, AnomieBOT will start posting messages on the peer review talk page. What to do about this?

1. Check the log of reviews, scroll to the bottom for the oldest reviews, and close them.
2. If there is still a problem, then go to the main page, select an active topic, and change mode to mode. This will transclude only the names of the reviews and links to the reviews for that topic. When some of that topic's reviews have been archived, the 'list' can be changed back to 'transclude'

Troubleshooting: No reviews are transcluded

This occurs when the "post-expand size" has been exceeded. See above for methods for dealing with this.

Troubleshooting: A review is "too long" to display in full

In 2015 there came a number of times when the peer review process was so active that the post-transclusion size (see above) was exceeded, or close to being exceeded. At the time, all reviews were always transcluded in full. This was very problematic, because if exceeded editors would not be able to see the list of active reviews. Even closing reviews that were inactive would leave too many reviews open. In order to prevent this, reviews that were over a certain arbitrary length would instead display a message that they were "too long" to display in full. Being so long, such reviews are likely already to be active and are unlikely to benefit as much from being transcluded in full.

Troubleshooting: My review doesn't display on the 'unanswered reviews' list

The unanswered reviews list is automated. It only displays reviews where the date of creation matches the date of the last edit, ie. if they have not been edited.

If your review isn't displaying, it is probably because you've made a slight change to your request (even a small as correcting a typo). Please add your review to the list of reviews not displaying here: Template:Peer review/Unanswered peer reviews sidebar