UESPWiki talk:Patrollers/Archive 2

This is an archive of past UESPWiki talk:Patrollers discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Wait Period

I've been thinking that it might be a good idea to have a three month waiting period after a failed nomination before you can nominate yourself again. Any thoughts, agreement, questions, rapid goats?--Ratwar 01:28, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I'd definitely support that. I think it would give us a good amount of time between one application and the next to judge whether any improvement has been made. And by "failed nomination", I assume you're also including withdrawn nominations as well, as discussed on IRC? --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 01:29, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Support from me as well, for withdrawn and opposed nominations. I would not count nominations by others though, like we had with Volanaro, when Benny220 nominated him. XD --Benould^•T•C 01:41, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I personally support that, but I don't think it should count for people who withdraw their nominations when most of the votes are in their favour, they may have had to withdraw themselves for personal reasons or cmmitements, just a thought. --Volanaro 01:45, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I count any nomination that isn't approved as a failed nomination, mainly because I haven't seen anyone who was going to be approved withdraw. As for the question of whether or not to include non-self nominations that fail, personally, I think they should count. My thinking is that if you weren't going to get approved now, you won't make it in three months, so we shouldn't waste our time. Of course, if most people disagree with this, I am perfectly willing to concede the point. Furthermore, judging by votes at the time of withdraw is a bad option. Getting a nomination is not a majority vote, it is consensus.--Ratwar 23:55, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

In Volanaro's case, however, the nomination was done without asking him beforehand, and he withdrew before any votes were cast. Of course, he did nominate himself 5 days later, but I can appreciate how the thought would tend to ruminate once it was suggested. :) While it's unlikely that someone who was going to be approved would withdraw, if they do, I'd tend to allow them to re-apply whenever they wish. I can see argument agains, because a Patroller who dithers a lot is likely not going to be an asset, but I can ceratinly understand that there may have been a situation that came up causing them to withdraw, which was later resolved, thus allowing them to reapply. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:30, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

I'd support the idea of the waiting period but I agree that there should be an exception in cases where somebody was nominated without their consent. If you self-nominated or agreed to be nominated following a post on a talk page (for instance), the waiting period should still apply. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:38, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

Oh, y'all are talking about that nomination. I just considered that basic vandalism to tell you the truth, not a nomination. There should be an exception for that.--Ratwar 10:55, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

I think that nominations should not be made without the nominee's approval. If a nomination is made by someone else and it is not clear that the nominee has consented, then nobody should vote on the nomination or otherwise consider the nomination "active" until the nominee has consented. The nominee should be free to withdraw the nomination at that stage without any penalty.

Once the nominee has agreed to the nomination (including the implicit agreement in self-nominations) I'd support a three month waiting period if the nomination is not approved or is withdrawn for whatever reason. First, in every case we've had so far where a nomination was withdrawn, the nomination was unlikely to be approved. Second, I don't see any reason why short-term personal issues should prompt the withdrawal of a nomination: there is no requirement that a patroller must immediately jump into action the minute the nomination is approved. If a patroller is busy for a few weeks, then he/she simply edits less (or not at all) during those weeks. If some serious personal issue arose that caused a nominee to quit the site completely, then it seems likely that it would take several months before the person would be ready to return to the site. Most importantly, trying to add in exceptions based upon the details of the withdrawal effectively makes a withdrawal meaningless. If we still need to make a decision on whether or not a withdrawn nomination would have been approved, then the nomination process has to be completed: allow editors to still vote after the "withdrawal" so that there is complete feedback; have an admin make a consensus call on whether the nomination was approved or rejected. The final status of a nomination can no longer simply be "withdrawn."

Overall, I think a three month interval is generally how long it takes for an editor to really demonstrate progress. In the one case where an editor was approved on a second nomination, it had been three months since the first nomination. An official wait period should prevent some unnecessary nominations and resulting unnecessary work on everyone's part. --Nephele^Talk 14:04, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

Well thought out, Nephele, and I would agree with that as-stated. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 00:47, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

When I talk about people having to withdraw nominations, I was thinking about something like this but whilst someone is in the process of being nominated. It is a minor possibility that i feel should be considered. --Volanaro 09:44, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

I can understand that people may withdraw nominations to bypass an oppose result which is definitely not acceptable but I feel that problems like the on mentioned above should be exempt from that. --Volanaro 09:46, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

I don't think there's enough reason to put exceptions in place for every circumstance and in any case, Nephele's right that you don't have to jump in and start patrolling. If you get approved, you can wait until your problem is over; if your nomination is opposed, you can try again in three months. Nobody is going to cast a vote based on somebody else's personal situation so I really don't see the need here. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:22, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

The other things to consider is that if there IS a truly exceptional circumstance that needs to be handled differently, we can always vote on it at the time. It's probably easier than trying to anticipate a dozen things that might never happen. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:19, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

I suppose at the end of the day the's always going to be ecxeptions to every rule. LIke RobinHOod said, it would probably better to vote for each incident rather make up a dozen rules for things that are likely to never occur. --Volanaro 07:01, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Yeah, that's my thinking as well, though I don't think an actual vote would be necessary. As I said originally, the wait period would only apply to self nominations, so if circumstances were such that re-nomination before the wait period ended was warranted, another person might renominate the nominee, if that makes any sense at all.--Ratwar 12:12, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

I think i understand, so what you're saying is, example:

I nominated myself
The majority vote was an oppose
I withdrew the nomination
A while later, within the 3 month wait period, Rpeh came and said "I think you're ready to be a patroller now"
He would be able to put in a nomination for me

Is that pretty much what you mean? --Volanaro 13:29, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

This seems like something that should be a "guideline" and not a "policy."

Voting should not proceed on a nomination without the nominee's express acceptance.
If a person's nomination is opposed or withdrawn, there would be a three month period before he or she could be nominated again.

Nephele's points above pretty much explain why I think these should be our guidelines. --GuildKnight^Talk2me 01:18, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

Looks like we have a consensus for a three month wait period, and to have nominations completed, even if withdrawn. --Benould^•T•C 20:51, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

So it would appear. I'll write up the addition in a couple of days in case someone else wants to chime in.--Ratwar 20:58, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

Umm, sorry, "have nominations completed, even if withdrawn"? I'm not particularly in favour of trying to force nominations to still proceed even if the nominee has withdrawn the nomination, and I don't see anything in the discussion that seems to say that there was any consensus to make such a change. The only reason I discussed continuing nominations after they are withdrawn was to say that such a process would be necessary if we wanted to make exceptions to the three month rule; the need to add such a process was one of my arguments against making exceptions to the three month rule. If we're going for a three month rule without exceptions for withdrawn nominations, I don't see any reason to change how withdrawn nominations are treated. --Nephele^Talk 21:20, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

I was assuming that Benould was saying that withdrawn nominations count the same as complete nominations (rereading it, I see I took it wrong). I agree with your point Nephele.--Ratwar 22:24, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

That's what I meant, counts the same. I actually have no opinion on how to file it, and certainly did not want to start another round of discussions. --Benould^•T•C 22:29, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

Oh, OK, sorry for the misinterpretation :) In that case, fine by me. --Nephele^Talk 20:50, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

Revert Rights

Do patrollers have access to the revert tool? If not am I alone in thinking that they should have access to it? I personally feel it would make their job a lot easier for quikly undoing e.g. multiple nonsense edits to 1 page. --Volanaro 08:02, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Nope. Only admins have it. There are other ways of undoing multiple edits (editing an old version of the page, for instance), and after the mistakes I made using Revert yesterday, I'm unlikely to be using it for quite a while! –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 08:14, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Fair enough, I have to admit that before I learned about the undo feature, I simply saved an older version of the page using the history so I can see that it may be a simpler option in some cases, it was just a thought. --Volanaro 13:25, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

And as ive been told a thousand times, dont worry, we all make mistakes! :) --Volanaro 13:25, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Inactive Patroller

I couldn't help but notice that Lordsword 8 has not made any contributions to the website since 2007. One of the criteria for becoming a Patroller is to be active and to patrol the Recent Changes. This would mean that Lordsword 8 does not meet the requirements of being a Patroller and his position as a Patroller should be terminated. --Matthewest ^{•T•C•E•} 07:42, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Several patrollers haven't made any contributions recently, but their permissions don't expire. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 07:59, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Okay then. I guess that defeats the whole purpose of being a Recent Changes Patroller. --Matthewest ^{•T•C•E•} 08:27, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

It's been debated several times in the past whether Admins and Patrollers should keep their privileges even if they're no longer active, and the general consensus is that yes, they should, in the event that we ever need extra hands and try to call on them to become more active, or just because they decide to return after a hiatus. Even if a Patroller is "out of touch" in terms of recent changes to site policy, they can always start with simply approving minor grammattical changes and the like until such time as they feel more comfortable with current practice. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:57, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

That seems fair enough. I'm guessing the reason Mentors have a limit to how long they can be away is because newcomers may actually call on them for help. --Matthewest ^{•T•C•E•} 19:08, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Me (The most important subject of all! :Þ)

Hi guys,

Figured this was probably the best way to contact all Patrollers at once. I've mentioned it one or two places before, but my preferred patrolling style is to attack the stuff that usually gets to the bottom of the list...the stuff that takes a fair bit of investigation in the game or in the Construction Set to properly patrol. But I don't get to patrol quite as much as I'd like. So I just wanted to say that if you see something that needs a fair bit of investigation that's in danger of not getting patrolled, please feel free to leave a link to it on my talk page. Even if I don't get to it before it gets bumped off, I'll try to find time to investigate the change at some point and change it/remove it if necessary. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 19:32, 13 June 2009 (EDT)

Special:Patrol

I have been recently using this tool... but it doesn't seem like the patrolling gets logged anywhere. Is this the case? Or have I not found the correct place? I have check my own logs, and the edits I patrol via the Special:Patrol don't show up. I want to use this feature, but I don't want it to look like I am doing nothing. :/ --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 18:55, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

You'll want to use Special:Log for that. You can check patrol logs, deletion logs, upload logs, move logs, etc. etc. Also, you should be cautious when using that feature. It is really handy, but it'll only show you the most recent unpatrolled change to a page. This means if there was a series of edits that weren't patrolled, you'll only get the last of them. Most of the time this isn't a big deal, but seeing the whole series can really help put some of the stranger edits into context. I would advise using it only for older edits (like, days old), but as long as you're thorough when using it, you shouldn't have any problems. –Eshe^talk 19:37, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

That is exactly where I was checking, but the ones I patrol with the Special:Patrol don't show up in it. I guess I could've missed something, but I am sure something isn't right. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 19:42, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

Initial Proposal for Overhaul

As a result of all of the various discussions lately about patrolling, I've been considering whether we should do a major upgrade of the patrolling system. One upgrade that I think would be immensely helpful is if we explicitly created separate criteria by which an edit must be judged. So instead of a single "mark as patrolled option" for an edit, there would be multiple checkboxes, for example:

Appropriateness -- a general check of whether the content even belongs on UESP. Most edits that get undone would fail this criteria (vandalism, nonsense, misplaced information, redundant information, unintelligible comment, etc.)
Spelling and grammar
Accuracy
Wikification -- the definition needs more refining, but basically I think a criterion is necessary to cover general wiki style: does it use the proper templates and layout? Does it include wiki-links? Major chunks of new content may be perfectly spelled, and completely accurate, yet still need some major work, and this criterion would catch those edits.

The checkboxes could be marked all at once by a single patroller, or could be filled in at separate times by different people.

Corresponding to these separate criteria, there would also be multiple patroller subtypes: appropriateness patrollers, spelling/grammar patrollers, accuracy patrollers, wikification patrollers (obviously we'd need some better labels/descriptions). Patrollers would only be able to check off criteria for which they are qualified. Our current patrollers would belong to all four subtypes: they'd be able to check off all criteria. But we could then also have patrollers with more limited capabilities. We could have a huge team of appropriateness patrollers -- I'd imagine nearly every regular editor on the site would qualify. There are also likely to be a lot of editors who could be spelling/grammar patrollers, but not accuracy patrollers, or vice versa.

The upshot of which is that, even though four times as many checkboxes would need to be clicked, there would be many more patrollers to do the clicking. It would also make it easier to ensure that all vandalism is cleaned up -- we'd probably want to try to have all edits checked for appropriateness within hours. A view of recent changes showing only unmarked appropriateness edits would immediately highlight which edits are high priority for checking. I'd imagine even more payoffs as we get used to the system: grammar-nazi-type editors could easily find a list of pages that need work, for example.

There are several other features that I'd program into the system that would make patrolling be less work overall, but those features are secondary, so I'll save the details for later. For now I just wanted to get some feedback on whether this type of overhaul would be useful -- does everyone else think that having multiple explicit criteria to use for patrolling would make sense?

The biggest issue with such an overhaul is, of course, the programming necessary to do it ;) And the enthusiasm of your responses will inevitably influence just how high a priority the programming would be! For reference, there is one existing extension that provides some of this functionality, namely FlaggedRevs. However, I spent some time experimenting with it and decided it wasn't really suitable for UESP -- it has too many features that I don't think we want (stable versions of pages, rating pages, etc), it's too hard to change the criteria to be more relevant, it doesn't appear to integrate with patrolling, and is missing some ease-of-use features that I'd really like to add to UESP. Instead, I think creating a new extension will be better in the long-term, even if it takes a bit more work and takes a bit longer before it's ready.

Thoughts? --Nephele^Talk 21:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't like it. My initial concern would be the over-complication of a system that does seem to work as it is. I know some things I cannot verify, but I can edit in terms of language. If I am concerned about the validity of the information, I do not mark it as patrolled and leave it for someone else who can verify it to patrol it. Adding a category for appropriateness alongside the others seems like an arduous and cumbersome task. It seems like it would have to a check-mark system of some sort. Currently, if something doesn't fit ALL the above-mentioned criteria, I don't mark it. I think this process works fine. And while I think we do need more patrollers (with the possible removal of some very inactive patrollers), this seems like an unnecessary complication. I think someone who becomes a patroller would have to fit the four criteria mentioned above. I prefer the current system. And if we have to write (I say we as a site, not necessarily me included) a program that doesn't really add much to the site (or help it to a massive extent), I dislike it even further. And you don't need anymore work as it is ;). --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 21:54, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I can see the benefits and the drawbacks to the system. The major benefit would be that would could have a lot more patrollers with only a limited functionality. I know a couple of recent Patroller nominations have not been unanimous, but they probably would be if the scope of a patrol were limited, and if their edits only got marked as patrolled in the categories that they've been allowed. (It'd be even neater if you could deliberately UNpatrol your own edits in certain areas where you want a second opinion.)

Of course, the drawbacks are, as Mr. Oblivion mentioned, the increased complexity of the system and the time required to create it or investigate FlaggedRevs.

In the end, I think I'm slightly for the changes, but I won't feel disappointed if we decide not to go through with them either. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 22:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I like this in it's entirety, if it can be done. An addition, if possible (after all, we are talking about something fairly hard to do), would be to make some User's edits auto-check a certain criteria. For instance; PLRDLF's info is as accurate as a patroller, however, due to his incomplete understanding of English, I would be unlikely to want him as a patroller (plus I doubt he'd patrol anyway). While we are talking about changes to the patrolling system, I would enjoy a recent changes where you could choose the categories you want to search recent changes for (like the search system) instead of a drop-down box where you can only find one category. --Tim ^Talk 02:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I also like this in its entirety. At the moment, guidelines state that patrollers should be using the tag system to flag articles for further attention, but that rarely happens and is a rather cumbersome method anyway. I disagree that it's going to add much extra complexity: it can already be a complex decision as to whether or not to mark an edit as patrolled, but with this system one can at least mark some parts as okay without hiding other potential problems. Most edits will either get four ticks or, as Nephele points out, miss the "Appropriateness" criterion and be deleted anyway.

One extra suggestion would be changing the functions of the boxes slightly for talk pages. Perhaps the "Wikification" one could become "Question Answered" or something like that? Then it could signify that there's an unanswered question but not one that's important enough to qualify for a GQ tag.

FlaggedRevs seems like a hammer when we need a screwdriver. I'd much rather see a custom extension if you don't mind doing yet more work behind the scenes! –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 07:42, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I'd also like to see UNpatrol. There have been several times where I've accidentally patrolled a page, or done it and had a "Oh - hang on" moment, or done it with the intention of fixing something and then not had time or hit a problem. I don't think it should be used for posting doubtful material though and asking for a second opinion though - that's what talk pages are for. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea to look into improving the patroller system, but the method as currently suggested is somewhat expansive. The idea is good, dividing the criteria in multiple patrolling options, but it's something that seems designed for just a small part of the edits. Talk page edits and the likes would not need the Spelling and Wikification evaluations, for example. The second problem is that you will miss out when not judging the edit in its entirety. The different aspects of the edit tell much about it. A claim of a workable strategy holds more credibility for me if the phrasing is done well, it's added to a relevant page and its reasoning is sound; a researcher that has put effort in compiling his essay is taken more seriously. I judge an edit on all these criteria, but wouldn't be able to seperate as carefully as currently proposed. Call it instinct, but it helps.

I don't like the idea of adding patroller categories. We have few enough editors as it is, and I'd rather see them as full patroller or not at all. Monitoring everyone on various aspects and initiating a "promotion" when it's time seems like a very hard job. Seeing how much time a nomination is waiting for input, I don't think we should increase the use of this bottleneck. If I see a vandalism edit that has already been reverted by an editor - an editor that does not yet qualify for full patroller - I don't feel like I wasted time on checking the edit: That edit was easy to patrol!

Is it an idea to look into the ability to escalate edits to a criteria "box", instead of the currently proposed setup? For exampe, I see an edit that is badly spelled, not wikified properly and has not much credibility in the area of accuracy. I cannot judge the credibility (as it is in the Daggefall namespace) but I can fix the spelling and wikify it. I do that, and escalate the edit, that is still marked as "General", to the box with "Accuracy checking". --Timenn < talk > 13:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) In regards to unpatrolling your own edits, I knew what I meant, why didn't everyone else? ;) Specifically, I was referring to formatting and grammar. There are times when you've got all the correct information, it's appropriate, etc., so you add it to the page. But then you look at it and realize that either in terms of how you've worded it or how you've laid it out, it's really ugly, but you can't quite seem to make anything else work. That's when I was suggesting an unpatrol-your-own-edits option would be useful. Of course, there are ways around that already (like just plain asking for a second opinion on the Talk page), but it might be useful to have it as part of the check-box system as well. And Rpeh's point is well taken - just plain unpatrolling someone else's edits for when you have a "hold on" moment would be good too. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 23:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Patrolling New Pages

Is it just me or is there no longer a way of Patrolling new pages? It used to be that there was a little link at the bottom of the page, but that's now been replaced by the "Add New Section" tag. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 01:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Try going here. See if you can see the link (I left it unpatrolled). –Elliot ^talk 01:56, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I just discovered that the problem was that you (I think it was you, I didn't actually look it up) Patrolled the page just as I went to look at it. Other pages show it properly. :) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 02:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha, okay, I thought that could've been another option. –Elliot ^talk 02:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Nomination Guidelines Revisited

I've just been looking over our nomination guidelines, and honestly, I'm a little surprised at how easy-going they are for a Patroller. Can I suggest that we tighten them up a bit? Specifically, I think we should consider the following changes:

increase the number of edits required (though I'm not too picky about that);
significantly increase the time requirement to something like one or three months (no offense intended to those who became Patrollers in less than that) - a mere week seems way too little to me;
re-word the Style requirement to make it seem more like a requirement (more like the Spelling requirement currently reads);
remove the "Watch Recent Changes" requirement altogether...or at least re-word it similar to the above so that it's more clearly a ~~requirement, rather than a recommendation~~ recommendation, rather than a requirement.

What do others think? --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Number of edits might be increased a bit (250?), but the emphasis should be that that is not the sole requirement.
The time requirement doesn't state a minimum time on the wiki, but instead assures that a patroller has been active in the last weeks, and doesn't come with a nomination after a period of little activity. Though I agree that we can give some requirements for minimum time on the wiki (1-2 months?)
I think the style requirement is clear enough. Perpaps some details can be added there.
It's harder to watch the recent changes if you are not a patroller, as you can't really check off what you evaluated. Still, it's nice if it's there as advice for people who want to become patrollers. Help them discover whether they are ready for it.

--Timenn-<talk> 11:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't clued in to the fact that the time requirements was meant only as a recent-activity thing. We should probably re-word it slightly to make it crystal clear, but I'd definitely like to see an overall time requirement as well. This would ensure that people from other wikis, who may know the technical stuff inside and out, have nevertheless had time to get used to our fairly friendly style (or at least, we try), get a feel for our templates and categories, etc. My "Recent Changes" wording was poor. I'd definitely like to see something about it kept in there, but either remove it from the requirements section and just make it a strong recommendation or change the wording to something more requirement-like, like "must be familiar with the Recent Changes" system. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 18:58, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

What about adding a requirement for e-mail to be enabled, like we have with Mentors? I can see something like that where, for instance, another editor may want to ask about why you patrolled or undid an edit, but doesn't want to make it seem like a big thing, so wants to take it private. (I'm sure there's a million other reasons as well, that was just the one that came to mind.) —Robin Hood ^{(Talk • E-mail • Contribs)} 19:08, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

This topic is being discussed again at the Administrator Noticeboard. --GK^talk2me 17:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Patrolling Tips

The Recent Changes list can be rather daunting at times, so I thought it might be a good idea for the old hands and newbies alike to share their tips with each other. A lot of the "what to" is summarized at UESPWiki:Patrollers/Patrolling Guidelines, but at least as important as that is the "how to". Following is a summary of my process, along with some tips/notes along the way. I'd love to hear the process and tips other Patrollers use as well. If this becomes a good collection of tips, we can re-work it into something more suitable for the Guidelines or some other such page.

Open Recent Changes. (Duh!)
(Optional) Hide patrolled edits. (Useful if you just want to do patrolling and aren't worried about following everything that's going on.)
Find your starting place. Usually, this'll be the lowest unclicked (blue for most people) diff in the list.
Use the "Open link in new tab without leaving this one" feature to open a large number of diffs. (In most browser configurations, this is some combination of Ctrl and/or Shift while clicking on the diff link.)
Now go through each one and take appropriate action. If you need to both mark the edit as patrolled and edit/undo it, open the "Mark as patrolled" in a new tab; otherwise, you have to use the back button a few times to get to an edit that you could be half-way done with by now.

The advantage of this method is that as soon as you're done with one diff and close the window, the next one is on-screen in front of you. Also, if the server or your connection are a bit lagged, you can be examining and patrolling the first diffs while others are still being opened. Obviously, if you suspect that it's the server itself that's lagged, don't go opening 50 consecutive diffs. Try to limit yourself to 5 or 10.

Anyway, that's my process and tips. Anybody else? – Robin Hood↝talk 04:48, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Most of the time, the recent additions are all patrolled, or very nearly so. If you want something to do, or want to see what edits are causing problems for everybody else:

Open Recent Changes. (Again, duh!)
Change to Show Last 500 edits
Change to Show Changes in the last 30 days
Hide patrolled edits

You will probably see dozens of unpatrolled edits. If there are too many, use the namespace dropdown to focus on the games you know about - just remember that article and talk namespaces for each game are different entries.

It's usually a good idea to do this every so often and see if any article-space edits are about to drop off the list. If no patroller has been able to check and verify something for a whole month, sometimes it's a good idea to move such edits to the talk page instead of leaving them unchallenged on the article. rpeh •T•C•E• 12:08, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

One thing I love is the "Mouse Gestures" addon for FireFox. I will click "Hide Patrolled Edits and just right-click and drag downwards over the diffs, opening several tabs of unpatrolled edits all at once. Then you decide what you do with them, then refresh RC and repeat. I have also found that I can set up a "live feed" with a greasemonkey script that will refresh the RC page at any amount of time you tell it to.--^Corevette₇₈₉ 03:01, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I can not add much, except for the fact that I have it all set in my Preferences, so I always start the RC with 500 edits shown. Since I'm not really knowledgeable about Morrowind or the older DOS-games, I tend to read through all the Oblivion-related edits, patrolled or not, just to keep up-to-date. Then it is just Hide Patrolled Edits like everybody else, trying my best to catch vandalism and false information as quickly as possible. --Krusty 06:00, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this one is too obvious or not...

Sometimes one will find a series of edits made to one page, all of which need to be undone. There's an easier way than manually unpicking the changes.

Open the History tab on the page you want to revert.
Click on the date of the last good page version.
Click the Edit button. You'll see a warning saying "Warning: You are editing an old version of this page. If you save it, all changes that were made since this version will be reverted."
Enter an edit summary explaining what you're doing and save.

Much easier. For vandalism, admins have a much easier method - the Revert button, but that's another story. rpeh •T•C•E• 07:59, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Semi-Active

I suggest moving Vesna, Darkle and Corevette789 to Semi-Active since their activity is very reduced lately. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 09:13, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

For Vesna, I'd give it until the new year and then one of the Patrollers or Admins can consider moving her to inactive if she hasn't contributed or patrolled by then. Since the other two are both active to some degree, it's up to them to decide. – Robin Hood↝talk 15:41, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

We seriously need more Patrollers

Why? Because, from the Admins and Patrollers, very few are online for a lot of time. Only rpeh from the Patrollers and Krusty from the Admins. Now that Brf will (probably) become one, the things will get a little easier, but the need for Patrollers is big. Especially now that TES V has been announced. Thoughts? --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 22:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Rigas, things aren't that bad. Honestly. There have been other bare periods, and while it doesn't hurt to give some people a kick in the backside every once in a while, you can't squeeze water from a stone. Patrollers come and go. Nearly three years ago, Nephele and I had a conversation about this exact subject, which led to the creation of {{Watcher's Eye}} - a template that has been rewarded a grand total of six times.

The truth is that at this stage in a wiki's lifecycle, things are going to be quiet. It's four years since the last game was released and it's astonishing that we still have as many active users as we do. Patrollers will be back. Unfortunately, I dare say the trolls will be back too. rpeh •T•C•E• 22:39, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

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