We’ve had problems in the past about talk pages. People chatting back and forth, which creates problems in that more edits need to be patrolled. Why don’t we exclude talk pages from the RC Patrol? Some would say that anonymous users might post like crazy on people’s talk pages trolling and spamming, but a possible alternative to that would be to have anonymous talk page messages patrolled. With registered trolls, the problem would be no different than the forums.
system
2
No. Just. No. Talk pages reflect just as much on the site as the articles do. If we allow the talk pages to go uncensored, we’ll head down a pretty ugly path pretty quickly. Patrolling keeps the discussions within (or mostly within) the bounds of decency.
system
3
Sorry, but I don’t agree with this at all. If talk pages are excluded from RC Patrol, it would be much, much harder to monitor what is being posted to talk pages, therefore it would be much more difficult to deal with serious trolls, spammers and vandals promptly. Even if talk page message patrolling is limited to anonymous users only, logged-in users would still be able to slip through. With the chatting issue, users who chat about non-wikiHow topics excessively can easily be warned, and after this they often stop, however they can be blocked if they decide to carry on.
Sorry, Neon…but I agree with the above. Talk page messages would be much harder to monitor if we excluded them from RC patrol. Thank you for sharing your suggestion, though. I appreciate your eagerness to make wikiHow a better place!
system
5
It has been suggested before, but like Lois said above, “No”.
Sorry - I didn’t know that was suggested before. Thank you for letting me know.
Anna
8
@Neon-Heart
it’s great that you’re thinking about how to improve wikiHow and patrolling! Good call posting the idea and getting some feedback on it - as a newer wikiHowian too, I know there are times when I also ask about ideas that have been suggested before, particularly for conversations that don’t pop up easily with a forum search. Doesn’t hurt to ask! I do agree that it’d be great if we didn’t have to worry about chattiness adding to the RC queue, but @Loiswade42
and Bob and @Adelaide1230
and @Abrogation316
bring up important points about the trolls/vandalism and spam. Maybe one day we can figure out some third solution that allows Talk pages to be monitored in a different way, or by choice of the patroller (well, this is technically possible now, in that you can patrol by the Talk namespace, but then you’re limited to only looking at that namespace - maybe something where you can select which ones you want to see would be cool). Definitely something to chew on, even if just removing them from RCP right now isn’t the answer. Thanks for the food for thought!
