Hi everyone, my apology if this issue has been discussed here on Forum before. I might miss it. I noticed on the quite few new patrollers’ talkpages that they either approved a bad edit, reverted a good edit (I saw a lot of messages about that), etc. etc. which created a lot of extra work and take the valuable editors’s time away. My question (or suggestion): would it be a good idea to give them a limited access to wikiHow’s apps by banning patrolling recent changes at least a FIRST FEW months on wikiHow until they get the hands-on? . It took myself a good few years before I knew what the heck I was doing when started patrolling. From my observation a majority of new users are NOT at all ready to be patrollers.
I agree, but maybe not quite that long unless an Admin shortens the time. I had no clue what rollback meant when I first started! I am still learning a few things even now!
I’m against the idea that we should ban new users from patrolling for months
. For example, I learned how to patrol rather quickly, and to the best of my knowledge, my patrols are rather accurate. Keeping new users from using the tools would only serve to be a discouragement, in my opinion.
@Laura7491
Your concern is very reasonable, so I appreciate your bringing this to our attention! However, I would have to say that we have a Patrol Coach to help new patrollers thrive on wikiHow, and there may have been times in which contributors learn from bumping into the patrol coach. In addition, edits in which patrollers make mistakes are usually noticed and the users are coached, so not too much damage is done. We also have features in which administrators can attempt to slow a patroller down by placing a limit, or “throttle” on someone’s account if he or she makes too many mistakes, and if there are still issues, a staff person can even lower the limit or remove patrolling abilities. I do feel that bridge should be crossed when we come to it, though, rather than banning a user from using RC Patrol right off the bat. Here’s my reasoning behind that: There might be some users who figure out our guidelines, and how to patrol, before joining wikiHow, or new users who have edited on other wikis before and know the difference between a good and bad edit. So banning the RC Patrol app from all new users by default would not be fair to those users; we could potentially discourage and/or lose some users that could make a positive impact on this project through their patrolling. Well, that’s just my two cents – I look forward to seeing what others have to say!
Despite the number of patrollers I see who have a hard time with using RCP, which is why I have a specialty message to coach users who revert good edits, I also disagree with banning new users from using it from the start. If anything, I would suggest that when a new user opens RCP for the first time, they could be shown a brief tour of how the tool works before starting. This idea doesn’t ban new users from using it, and they’ll get to learn exactly how to use it before starting.
@WritingEnthusiast14
, may be a couple of months… but it would not be a big discouragement. 2 months is quite a nice amount of time to pick up on things. You learned quite quickly but many others are not so quick, and they make a mess.
@Adelaide
, I was just thinking about a couple of months of ban or restriction. The mess they make on wiki takes away a lot of time. Not only we have to revert but also to post a talk message on their page. And if you multiply the time spent on writing one message by a number of users who did the bad edits every day it will come to a BIG amount of WASTED time that could be spent on doing other edits.
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@ Laura… just a caution… Both you and I were once those “newbie patrollers”. You and I got where we are today because of the patient and kind coaching we received. Sure! There are a lot of patrolling mistakes being made… but it wasn’t so long ago that you and I were making the same mistakes. Let’s not let the patience and coaching stop with us. Let’s you and I pay it forward instead.
@Lugia2453
, it’s a good idea about the tour… I agree with that. However, I doubt they will read it. I remember that an instruction manual was created in the beginning of this year to guide the new article authors how to create an article. It was a super idea. However I still see a lot of the new articles that are completely unformatted. Some are unformattable and have to be tagged “nfd|not”. My point about the tour is - though the idea is very good, but unfortunately people are lazy to read the instructions. But this is something wikiHow can try to do… They have nothing to lose by trying. =)
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I’m confused as to why you stated this (that it took you years to get where you are now), but supporting the action of banning people from patrolling for a few months. Like Lois said, everyone here has been a newbie patroller. How did you get better at it? From practice, advice from others, and learning from your mistakes, right? Rather than banning people from what they attempt to do, circulate what older patrollers have done for you on them – give them a head’s up that you’re concerned – give them links to edits that they have patrolled which should have been reverted – give them advice to take it more slowly and to thoroughly read each edit, regardless where the edit was made. – Just remember, back in the days… wikiHow didn’t have a Patrol Coach to automatically undo patrolsor even notify people. Everything was reviewed and manually reverted by volunteer editors. –
@Loiswade42
, I was very cautious in the beginning when I joined wiki… They should be more cautious when patrolling. PRC is more complicated than other wH’s apps. OK, well … Lois, you have a point. It’s just gets frustrating when they revert good edits on dozens articles in one day . I remember I never reverted a good edit when I patrolled in the beginning because I avoided to do damage to the site. . Can you create a pop-up message for the first time patrollers to be very cautious ?
@Maluniu
, I practiced only after I was comfortable enough with what I was doing. I was very cautious in the beginning trying to avoid to do damage. New patrollers should be more cautious and not revert one good edit after another. The key word is c a u t i o u s.
I am not in favor of limiting patrolling for a long period, but lately it seems like very inept patrollers seem to think it is simply a game of seeing how many edits they can patrol, like this account that was created yesterday and managed to patrol 277 edits in less than an hour http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special:Log&offset=&limit=500&type=patrol&user=FurryFlux&page=&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1
, received lots of patrol bot messages, and apparently moved on? Another quick patroller was put on patrol throttle and almost immediately created a sockpuppet account to continue patrolling? Since the patrols can easily be ‘‘unpatrolled’’, there doesn’t seem to be much damage, but these people are also reverting edits (one would suppose), and when those reverts enter the patrol queue, the intermediate edit isn’t shown, so who knows if a good edit was rolled back, unless someone actually manually goes to the page history? As long as people see patrolling recent changes as a contest, and people do, since the ‘‘patrol count’’ is there, along with the weekly post on community achievements is reminding us, quantity is always going to trump quality. Until MacDonalds1 made a big deal about being on top of the leaderboards, I had no idea how poorly he was patrolling, and it took quite a while to just review a few hundred of the edits and reverts he made to realize there was an issue. Still, he patrolled many more edits that were not (that I am aware of) double checked, and so, may have reverted hundreds of good edits? That isn’t good for the community. We have ‘‘special:RC’’ to speed up patrolling… but the reality is, making it easy to patrol quickly opens the doors to poor quality patrolling.
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You know what? I agree. When I first joined wikiHow I was nervous to do the RC because I saw talk pages telling them they did a bad edit. “I’ll do it when I get a little experience.” I told myself. I did a lot of research to get started. Until I was 3 months, I gave it a go. I made only a few mistakes but luckily never got my RC blocked. So I think wikiHow should do it. It can be very helpful. Plus, they can always do other things like clean up articles, spell check, fix stubs, and tips patrol! Tips patrol is so much easier then RC. Well that’s that. All though I am glad I tried the RC when I was just a few months old.
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This game has been going on for yeeeaarrrrrrrrrrrsss… I can remember the countless rushes, celebrations, wild countdowns, templates, “parties”, etc that was related to get the RC count to zero. And it still happens… this is why I stopped participating in forum threads about RC so long ago, and stopped patrolling myself and moved onto other things…
I was one of them before when I was new! I would suggest that Patrol Coaching should be improved.
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T"his game has been going on for yeeeaarrrrrrrrrrrsss… I can remember the countless rushes, celebrations, wild countdowns, templates, “parties”, etc that was related to get the RC count to zero. And it still happens… this is why I stopped participating in forum threads about RC so long ago, and stopped patrolling myself and moved onto other things… " Wow, they really do those things?
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@Laura7491
If you see this happening, can you let me or @Anna
know so they can be coached and/or blocked from patrolling, and their patrols can be put back into the queue as needed?
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There were “the olden days” when RC used to get up into the thousands
, and we didn’t have patrol coach, unpatrolling, or throttling to help check on new patrollers. We’ve come a long way
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o.o No RC coach O_O Oh my… You guys sure have
