1

I’ve been doing a little bit of quality guardian (for rc patrols) today and quite a few patrols of votes for NFD|dups from the NFD Guardian are coming up. I’m seeing a few issues with the NFD Guardian as it deals with dups though… While I think articles nominated to be deleted for duplicates could be in the NFD Guardian, in the tool’s current state it’s not prepared for people to review two articles side by side and decide if they’re duplicates.If the tool was modified so you could view and compare both articles at the same time (from within the tool) then we may see more reliable votes. Right now though it seems like the votes are all over the place. There’s articles with unique content that are simply being deleted rather than merged, articles with totally different titles which are redirecting to one another, etc. A separate but similar issue is that any article with just a {{NFD|dup}} tag (and no redirect article) is redirected to the wikiHow:Deleted Article page.To my understanding, that page is for articles which have been repeatedly created and deleted, extremely inappropriate titles, and other things that could never have the possibility of being formed into a good, factual article. However, most of the articles going through the NFD|dup process could be created into a proper article in the future, if a duplicate no longer exists. At the present time I don’t think it’s beneficial having the NFD|dups in the NFD Guardian, at least not without adjustments to the tool to account for this unique deletion policy.

2

Do you have examples?

3

I’ll have to go through the quality guardian logs from yesterday but I’ll see what I can find.

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Here’s a few examples… I suppose some of this is dependent on how one interprets the merge/deletion policy, as I’m willing to admit I’m not the best one to ask when it comes to questions pertaining to titles. http://www.wikihow.com/Act-Happy-when-You’re-Not&redirect=no - Redirecting to http://www.wikihow.com/Act-Happy - they’re two specific cases, one to teach you how to act happy in general, one how to modify your behavior from being sad/angry to being happy http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-the-Best-Haircut&redirect=no - Redirecting to http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Haircut-That-Flatters-Your-Facial-Shape - One is choosing the best haircut in general, one is choosing a hairstyle based on your facial shape http://www.wikihow.com/Peel-a-Pineapple&redirect=no - Redirecting to http://www.wikihow.com/Cut-a-Pineapple - When it comes to cutting pineapples you might use the same steps as when you peel it, but the terms peel and cut in general are two separate tasks http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Video-on-Youtube&redirect=no - Redirecting to http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Highly-Viewed-Youtube-Video - Titles are distinct, one should be the steps teaching you how to make the video, upload it to YouTube, and the proper steps in doing so…the other should teach you the steps in creating a video that will be popular among YT viewers

5

It’s definitely an interpretation thing and not a tool failing. More users of the tool would be a great help; not for reducing the numbers, but for getting a wider viewpoint.

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That being said, it would help to increase the number of votes necessary to redirect the article, as opposed to 2 people minimum as it currently is.

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Maybe 3 admins and/or 6 boosters? Or a mandatory discussion page comment concerning the current nominated article?

8

Perhaps. Anything over the current number. It would mean progress would go slower in that section of NFD Guardian, but it would ensure the quality of wikiHow.

9

Quality is better then quantity; I support this change.

10

Even after all this discussion I still think the two issues I mentioned above are valid problems. Requiring more votes might help some, but it’s not going to entirely resolve the problem.

11

Thanks for the feedback Maniac. I totally understand your concern. I think if we dig a little deeper it’s not so much that the tool is failing, as much as it is that the people using the tool might not be looking closely enough, or may not have as strict of an interpretation of what is a duplicate and what is not as would be ideal. This has always been a problem, the tool just makes it more obvious. Any of the people who voted for the titles you brought up could have voted differently. So maybe what we really need is to coach people more on how they vote, or at least ask them why they voted the way they did, since they may not be interpreting the deletion policy the way you do. As for the tool redirecting to the deleted article page, that was done so that if a bad redirect was created, it could be easily undone. It hinges, though, on people having made the right decision, as all our tools do, which goes back to the importance of coaching:wink: