Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Proposed deletion patrolling

Flawed

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion#Flawed. Looks like some patrolling is warranted. ~Kvng (talk) 14:19, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Tools arms race

I like to do a nice job with my PROD patrolling to avoid unnecessary escalation and so for each DEPROD I leave a completed {{old prod}} on the talk page. This is a manual process with many cut-paste steps. There's no way a conscientious PROD patroller can keep pace with PRODders who PROD an article using Twinkle in two clicks and a flimsy/snarky/WP:BITEy comment. Is there a way to slow down some of these high-volume PRODers? Should we ask for PROD to be removed from Twinkle? Should we join the arms race and get DEPROD added to Twinkle or find someone to write a helper script? ~Kvng (talk) 20:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Kvng, it looks like your message from 2016 is still waiting for a response so there isn't much activity here lately. Is there still an active PROD patrol? I know of a few editors who regularly review PRODs and de-PROD ones but they mainly focus on subjects of interest to them, not PRODs in general.

Maybe the discussion would be more active at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion and I have seen you have started a discussion there. As for Twinkle, Wikipedia talk:Twinkle is very active so you might make a proposal there. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

As for PRODs in general, some deletion tags are rather pathetic or offer little deletion rationale at all. I de-PROD'd one that just said "Notability", that's all it said...not "Problems with Notability" or "This individual isn't notable enough" or "Doesn't meet GNG", it just said "Notability". Another interesting phenomena we have in PRODland is I often seen PRODs by IP accounts whose only edit is to PROD an article. I almost feel like this is a regular editor who logs out to register a PROD and then logs back into their account to do the rest of their editing work. I can't otherwise explain these one edit IPs that PROD pages for deletion. Who are these people who only make one edit and know enough about Wikipedia to tag an article with a PROD tag? Why would an editor log out to PROD an article, it's typically uncontroversial. It's a mystery. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I started the discussion here in part to try and determine whether we still have any active PROD patrollers. I personally patrol less than once a year lately. ~Kvng (talk) 22:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Re twinkle: it technically does have a deprod feature - open the "Tag" window and unselect {{proposed deletion/dated}}. – SD0001 (talk) 16:21, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@SD0001 This is much faster but I don't see a way to customize the edit comment so some are getting the impression that I'm DEPRODding for no reason. ~Kvng (talk) 02:20, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

@Kvng There's a "Reason" field at the bottom of the Tag window, which is appended to the edit summary. – SD0001 (talk) 04:44, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Streamlined patrolling

After gaining some experience patrolling, I have streamlined my approach. The instructions in Wikipedia:WikiProject Proposed deletion patrolling § Common mistakes with prod, and what to do about them require a lot of editing for each deprod and I just couldn't keep up. Here's my streamlined approach. Keep in mind that editors are not required to give any justification when deprodding so this streamlined approach is still goes well beyond policy requirements.

1. Use Linkclump on WP:PRODSUM to open a batch of soon-to-expire prods in tabs
2. Use WP:TWINKLE/Tag feature
   1. Uncheck {{Proposed deletion/dated}} (and {{Proposed deletion endorsed}} if present)
   2. Leave a clear deprod rationale in the Twinkle Reason field. A common rationale I use, for instance is "Deletion contested, consider merge or redirect to [[]] as preferred WP:ATD". This rationale will be saved as an edit summary.
3. For articles without evidence of notability that have a clear parent topic. I often go straight from prod to redirect by replacing the article contents (including prod tag) with a redirect to the parent topic. For example, non-notable albums can be redirected to an artist or discography article or section and non-notable books can be redirected to their author's article.

~Kvng (talk) 17:36, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

March patrol stats

I've been at it again and I've been keeping stats. In March I reviewed 627 proposals and deprodded 229 (37%) of them. 29 (12%) were then sent to AfD and at AfD 11 (34% of AfDs, 5% of deprods) were deleted. 35% of deletion proposals in March were not worthy of deletion. Without patrolling we're unnecessarily deleting 7 articles per day. ~Kvng (talk) 23:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)