I’ve been trying to use the By User feature on RC, but when I do, it won’t count those edits. Is this another RC bug, or is it just me?
This bug has been mentioned in the forums before, and is a known issue. It’s not just you, and according to @Anna
and @Reuben
, the bug report for it has been filed as of 43 weeks ago. ( http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/6767/rcpatrol-by-user-presenting-patrolled-edits/
)
That was way
before my time, so I had no idea.
@WritingEnthusiast14
If I remember correctly (and based on my and @Byankno1
reporting this before), it doesn’t actually patrol the edits either…check the Patrol Log to be sure, but in order not to waste your time, your best bet is to avoid “By User” until this is addressed.
@Isorhythmic
It doesn’t patrol the edits (I discovered that after a few frustrating attempts). I’m not going to do that anymore until it gets fixed. However, I hope it gets fixed soon, because it would be a nice tool.
Anna
6
Funny, this bug was filed before I was really active in bug reporting, but I had never thought of it as a bug! I use that “patrol by user” feature to check up on all the edits by particular folks, whether or not they’ve been patrolled - like, to make sure everything by a particular vandal is cleaned up, or check on all the recent edits by a new categorizer, etc (even if they’ve already been marked by someone else). From what I know, and the test I just did, it *does* seem to mark patrolled the ones that have not yet been patrolled, though. If it wasn’t working before, this may have been fixed (probably as a side effect of other fixes) somewhere along the way, Jeff. WE14, are you seeing something different right now? You can try it for a particular author where you know they have unpatrolled edits, and see if it goes into the patrol logs then (it clearly won’t if it’s already been patrolled, but I think it does for unpatrolled ones). You can see on my test account, here
- I patrolled those most recent 2 with Adelaide under the patrol by user feature. All this being said, I can see this would be a bummer if you’re looking to make sure that all the RCP edits you see by a certain user are unpatrolled ones! So the bug is still filed, and I wont’ change that, haha. I just thought I’d throw my personal two cents in that I will actually miss the bug if it’s fixed
I like to use this feature to be able to patrol edits by admins and boosters, since I’d trust their edits more than a new user (a big part of edits that show up are from new users), and it wouldn’t require the careful, tedious screening that a edit from an inexperienced user would take. Admittedly, sometimes I’m not up for the hard work of reviewing a typo-ridden article by a new user, and I take the easier way until I’m ready again.
@Anna
You’re right that it patrols the unpatrolled edits. That’s the same as it was before, I think. But there’s no way of knowing if they were patrolled or not from RCP, unless the number doesn’t decrease after marking it. Using it to check a user’s edits is an interesting off-label way to use that function though, I hadn’t thought of that. @WritingEnthusiast14
One interesting way to patrol is patrolling “by user, old school style.” I open the Recent Changes (try my link, http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hidebots=0&limit=1000&hidepatrolled=1
it shows 1,000 changes, only unpatrolled edits and not bot edits). Scan through to see who’s got a bunch of edits. Ctrl-click the diff link (or use middle mouse button, depending on how you have it set up) to open it in a new tab. Go through the whole list for that one user, or groups of users (admins, boosters, red names/new users, etc.)… I’ve easily opened 40-50 tabs at a time patrolling BR’s edits. Once you’ve opened all the edits you want (or feel your computer start to buckle under the pressure of 85 open tabs), proceed with patrolling them one at a time. If you use the Ctrl-W shortcut to close the tab immediately after you hit “Mark as patrolled,” it makes for pretty quick patrolling because the next tab will come into focus. Remember quality over quantity, always, but I started doing this after finding out the “By User” option in RCP doesn’t work as expected… and it’s a good way to plow through a lot of patrols. Let me know if that method makes sense or if you find it useful.
@Isorhythmic
Thanks for the advice, but my computer isn’t particularly fast. I’ve never had any more than 4 or 5 tabs open at a time, and I’m not even going to try anything like the numbers you mentioned. Occasionally, my computer gets into slow fits when I’m doing hardly anything at all. Once, my computer went turtle slow just because I was running my web browser and Google Earth simultaneously. However, I might try it with a few edits at a time.
