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Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2022/February

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Reviewer proposal


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This is another random thought:

Background
Recently we have had a shortage of reviewers and reviewing of articles. One of the reasons for the lack of candidates for reviewer is the length of the process to gain the permission (currently at least seven days). Another reason is that the criteria are quite heavy with requirements like having had many articles published. We also have a new method of testing potential reviewers with co-reviews with existing reviewers. Whilst I am still in favour of co-reviewing, I think it can be time consuming.
Proposal
1. It is proposed that for a trial period of six months, we should relax some of the more stringent requirements and instead have the following:
  • A candidate should have:
- a registered account;
- made at least 500 non-automated edits;
- been active in the last thirty days (perhaps at least 50 edits/actions?);
- made at least 75 edits in the previous 45 days;
- not been blocked from editing on this wiki in the last six months.
2. It is further proposed that the vote for each candidate should last a minimum of three days (as opposed to the current seven days).
3. On a permanent basis, we should ask for the Reviewer group to have two additional permissions added at Special:UserGroupRights:
- Add group: Reviewer
- Change semi-protection settings and edit cascade-protected pages (semiprotect)
The effect of this would be that rather than wait for an administrator or bureaucrat, any existing reviewer could close the request and add the Reviewer permission to the account of the candidate. However, removal of the permission would still be an admin task.
The second permission would allow non-admin reviewers to semi-protect published articles so only autoconfirmed users could edit them (as is our standard practice at the moment). Kudos to User:Xbspiro for this suggestion (see comments below).
Any thoughts, comments and suggestions would be welcome. [24Cr][talk] 02:05, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

A sidetrack, but adding page protection privileges to the reviewer group might make sense. (Not all reviewers are admins.) - Xbspiro (talk) 12:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I think we would have to ask for a reduced version to allow non-admin reviewers to semiprotect (allowing autoconfirmed to edit) rather than fully protect (only admins can edit). I’ll put this into the proposal. [24Cr][talk] 13:30, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Quick question: how long shall their Reviewer rights last amid the trial? Shall the rights last the same period as the trial, one year, or what? --George Ho (talk) 15:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: I am not sure yet but was thinking possibly for them to keep the rights until they’ve carried out 3 or 4 reviews without any major objections about their conduct or the quality of the review. If there is no issue, then a reviewer, admin or bureaucrat would leave a note on their talk page saying it was now permanent. If they hadn’t done any reviews in perhaps in the first 3–6 months, we could ask if they wanted to keep the permissions? I feel it would be more important to measure for review quality than time quantity, if that makes sense. Obviously I’m happy to hear other opinions. [24Cr][talk] 16:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@George Ho: There are undoubtedly aspects I’ve not considered, which is why I said I’m open to suggestions and improvements. I thought you might reply with suggestions, so I’m a bit surprised about the oppose vote. Could you expand on your vote and say what you’d like to see? The issue we are facing is a long delay in reviewing, which has lead to much fewer published articles lately. One of the reasons for this is a reduction in the number of available reviewers. I believe this is partly due to some of us becoming busy in real life. I also believe it is partly due to some of our processes having become a little too restrictive. In the last six years there have been just four successful new applications for reviewer (Acagastya, LivelyRatification, JJLiu112 and myself). I don’t think that is a good position to be in. Some of the applicants in the last six years were clearly too soon but others were put off by us setting the bar too high. We badly need more reviewers and I think we should try different ways off doing things to see what works. I see it being less harmful if we can encourage candidates to show us they can do the task if we give them a chance to use the tools. When I did a co-review with JJLiu112, they were clearly enthusiastic and able but had never known that we use a semi-automated tool (EZPR) to carry out reviews. It would have been far easier to do a co-review if they had been able to use EZPR and then semi-protect the page if it was successful. As far as possible abuses, this is why I included the point about no blocks in the past six months. Even with a rogue reviewer, there is nothing that could not be undone. [24Cr][talk] 19:44, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your concerns and sentiments about the Reviewer shortage, and there are rights ways to resolve this. As-is, this proposal wouldn't be it. I was hoping that expire date is set for those amid trial. In other words, you should propose their rights lasting six months until expiration. That way, I may change my vote. Indefinite duration I won't support. --George Ho (talk) 21:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@George Ho: Could you formulate a version which you could accept/welcome? - Xbspiro (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking it's almost the same as Cromium's, but their Reviewers rights should expire in six months, i.e. when the trial ends. I hope I formulate well, right? George Ho (talk) 14:25, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@George Ho: So, if I understand it correctly, your objection is that anyone who becomes a reviewer through this proposal should have it removed at the end of the six months? If so, then what about this process?
  • A candidate creates a new request page at WN:FRRFP.
  • An admin or a current reviewer checks the application page.
  • If the candidate is found to meet the minimum criteria (which might change per Bddpaux's suggestion below), voting on the application does not take place immediately but is postponed by the admin or current reviewer.
  • The admin or current reviewer adds the Reviewer group to the candidate account and asks them to review one article in the queue.
  • The candidate carries out a review (with assistance if required).
  • If the review is satisfactory, the candidate's application voting can begin and lasts for at least three days.
  • If the vote is in favour of the candidate, the application is closed as successful by an admin or a current reviewer and they keep the reviewer group.
  • If the review is not satisfactory, the candidate is asked to improve their understanding and their application is closed. The reviewer group is removed from their account immediately by an administrator.
  • If the candidate does not carry out a review within a week of receiving the reviewer group (or if the queue is empty, within 24 hours of an article being put in the queue), the application is closed as unsuccessful and the reviewer group is removed.
  • If the candidate misbehaves with their reviewer permissions during this time, they can be warned/blocked/permission_removed as appropriate.
  • At the end of the trial period, any candidates who don’t have approval by a vote of at least three days, will have the reviewer group removed.
  • After the trial is finished, we will have a community discussion about how to proceed in the future.
Thoughts? [24Cr][talk] 13:40, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"At the end of the trial period, any candidates who don’t have approval by a vote of at least three days, will have the reviewer group removed."

Maybe either that, or... Wait, do you have expiry tools? That is, I mean, stewards have given others short-term adminship for their local wikis. Do you have tools providing short-term rights/access the same way stewards have given others? There must be other wikis giving others short-term adminships. Right? This wiki should have tools setting expiry dates. Right? --George Ho (talk) 16:18, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that’s a good point. When most permissions are added to an account, the default option is "does not expire" but this can be changed to anything from 1 day to 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or a specific date. Shall we say it is set for 1 week in the first instance? [24Cr][talk] 17:35, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
┌───────────────────┘
 One week may be short, but I suppose it works. What about second instance? --George Ho (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I guess we could make it two weeks in the first instance. More than that would seem a bit much. A second instance would be situations like there were no articles in the review queue or the candidate was unable to review for external reasons e.g. illness. In such circumstances they would be given a second week. If they still cannot do a review, I think the application should closed unless there really are no articles to review (in which case an extra week should be given until there is an article to review). [24Cr][talk] 19:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One week or two weeks... Either is fine. You're kinda right about excess. But extra week wouldn't hurt if there are no remaining articles to review. --George Ho (talk) 05:24, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Bddpaux: I’m fine with that. @George Ho, Xbspiro, 2006nishan178713: do you have any objections to changing it to 45 days active and a minimum of 75 edits in this 45 days? [24Cr][talk] 13:40, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No objection. Xbspiro (talk) 13:49, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No objections either. --George Ho (talk) 16:04, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
45 days and 75 edits is a good threshold and the processes and rules laid by @Cromium can be agreed upon. No objections! 2006nishan178713t@lk 16:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I propose expiry dates set for trial Reviewer candidates (during/amid the trial), be it one week, one month, three months, six months, one year, or whatever. "does not expire", despite being a default choice, shall not be selected. (see my replies to the proposer Cromium above.) --George Ho (talk) 22:46, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I need some random days to think about this. Cheers, --SVTCobra 05:17, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Years ago, I proposed something similar--temporary reviewership to deal with temporary surges. We had a huge influx of articles from a class of Australian journalism students. Review was our limiting reagent back then and it's still our limiting reagent now. Bddpaux brings up the issue of reviewers not showing up to work. The thing to do is to find out why reviewer activity isn't what we want it to be. So. Reviewers, what's making it hard? Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:35, 9 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

  • Support as proposer. [24Cr][talk] 02:05, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support seems like a viable option to me. 2006nishan178713t@lk 10:02, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Reviewer access is not something to be toyed with. Without knowing how long the rights will last, especially after the trial ends, someone may potentially abuse it. Furthermore, a more concrete trial proposal would've been better. --George Ho (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed with you. Though I think we need someone to go through recent edits and generate a list of contributors who copy/edit others' articles often. They may be unsuspecting that they are likely a good reviewer if time permits. Effort could be put into getting them a bit more involved and getting them to make more significant editing if they are interested. Gryllida (talk) 00:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Also - note that people may be involved as pre-reviewers, i.e. they may be lacking the reviewer flag, but they may be invited to leave feedback to an article anyway. This is what one of my software does (though once I unsubscribed everyone from it due to inactivity, looked like nobody was interested to sign up again - not sure how this can be solved - ideas welcome) Gryllida (talk) 00:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Weak support, the proposal is great and I fully support it but the point raised by George Ho is of greater significance.2006nishan178713t@lk 18:34, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose I oppose all of this for a variety of reasons. Here is what I think: Once made a Reviewer, reviewers need to show up and work. This co-reviewer business is oddly quirky, but whatevs....it isn't essentially evil, so, y'know..... Generally speaking, I don't think that toying with the front end or the back end or twerking about with a few niggly parts of the process is going to do anything. If you are given the Reviewer bit (which is a serious thing) show up and work. Maybe we could work on giving more kudos/bling/rewards for Reviewing. I would be OK with that. Coaching someone toward becoming a Reviewing AND getting better at Reviewing is certainly a good thing......for sure. But, I think the approach might be mildly misguided.--Bddpaux (talk) 20:16, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Bddpaux: Well, since you mention coaching, we also have the "apprenticeship" idea but it’s been slow to get off the ground. [24Cr][talk] 20:24, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cromium: The only apprentice - had he ever been invited to co-review an article? - Xbspiro (talk) 12:03, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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