Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation

I've been working on a comprehensive rewrite of the AfC decline notices. I've felt for a long while that the current templates are pretty bureaucratic, jargon-heavy, and can be confusing for new users. Some of them are also inconsistent in formatting, tone, and language.

The goal of the rewrites are:

• Decodes jargon and simplifies the language into plain-English.
• Removes some of the walls of text (replacing with bullet points as much as possible).
• Limits the use of links to policy so as not to overwhelm users.
• Provides actionable criteria for improvement.
• Standardises tone, language, and formatting.
• Hopefully cuts down on newbie confusion and questions at the AFCHD.

Feedback on specific wording or anything missing would be appreciated.

User:Qcne/AfC template rewrites

Is there appetite, if there is consensus, to re-write the decline notices with something like what I have proposed? qcne (talk) 23:28, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

• Broadly supportive - particularly simplifying the language and making it more friendly. I'm not sure what difference it will make, but that is perhaps coloured by the revolving door articles, when actually most articles are not on a revolving door. I take the point about overwhelming contributors with a policy wall, but if we decline on policy / guidance grounds then it may make it more difficult to see the issue, though of course the text box can help there. One idea that may get around this is to have for each decline option there is a link to a friendly Essay, explaining the issue a bit more, and hints to next steps. This could then allow shorter messaging on the decline template, so the LLM one won't need to explain the hallucination point. ChrysGalley (talk) 11:30, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Clear improvement, especially the ai notice, which were starting to become outdated. It achieves all goals stated in the Rationale. I have no qualms with replacing the current set with this one.

I do think the notices on SNGs needs to be differentiated. Lasting coverage is typically required for WP:NEVENT, and WP:NCORP could use expansion on what counts as routine coverage. Ca ^{talk to me!} 12:29, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Good point - I've expanded slightly on the EVENT and CORP ones. qcne (talk) 13:03, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

I also created three new decline templates, which I think neatly round out our list:

1. list for declining stand-alone lists.
2. med for drafts with medical, health, or psychological claims sourced to unreliable sources.
3. contentious for drafts on contentious topics where the editor is not permitted to create drafts due to a lack of user permissions.

qcne (talk) 19:10, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

A general improvement over the current AfC decline notices. The only thing I found questionable is the addition of the "contentious" decline, which would be the most subjective reason to decline something. Blocking the creation of new "contentious" drafts, just because its editor doesn't have some "specific experience" (a very vague term by the way) instead of because of the content of the draft seems rather arbitrary and restrictive to me. NeoGaze (talk) 20:26, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Not a huge fan of that either, but it's born out of Wikipedia:Contentious topics/South Asia where if a new editor creates a caste-related draft (which happens more often than you think) it's getting speedily deleted under WP:G5, which doesn't feel ideal from a new-user experience point of view. I had trouble with the wording on this decline template, trying to keep it user friendly for often ESL editors. Any ideas? qcne (talk) 20:29, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

@NeoGaze I've checked all the CTs and all the ones with editing restrictions require EC status. I've updated the decline notice accordingly to be clearer. Hopefully that removes the subjectiveness. qcne (talk) 21:20, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

That's certainly better. I still disagree with the concept, but now at least now the issue is more clearly presented. I think that in these cases you mention, the draft could be declined/rejected under the reason of "What Wikipedia is not" instead of through a restriction that can cause issues of subjectivity and maybe even being abused by some who may want to control the discourse over certain controversial topics. NeoGaze (talk) 22:03, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of the rewritten notability declines, especially mentioning the relevant criteria in the first sentence. I support implementing these changes to the template. Nil🥝 23:20, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Now that I have read qcne's proposed updates I want to express my enthusiastic support and thanks for the work he's done here. I really think the bulleted lists have a better chance at being noticed by new editors who may find the walls of prose overwhelming. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 23:26, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

I've added four new decline templates, to round-out all the specific criteria for notability:

• User:Qcne/AfC_decline#geo
• User:Qcne/AfC_decline#species
• User:Qcne/AfC_decline#astro
• User:Qcne/AfC_decline#number

I've also added a new decline template for creative professionals. We get a lot of authors etc coming through AfC, and I felt a more targeted template towards creative professionals would be good, giving actionable advice plus the tip that it's often easier to prove notability of their work than the person.

• User:Qcne/AfC_decline#creative

qcne (talk) 13:56, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Looks good—agree with all guidance given. I suggest adding wikilinks to the medicine template. Ca ^{talk to me!} 15:49, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

@Qcne I welcome these changes, good work! NeoGaze (talk) 16:16, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Support. They are still 'information dense', but I can;t see how to overcome that.

Question: re ecr: might it be possible to auto-check editors status regarding EC, and thus ask that AFCH pre-populates that decline once being reviewed actively?

Great work. Thank you. 🇵🇸‍🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦‍🇵🇸 16:01, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Since we're on a roll, I've updated the text for:

• the accept notice, which gives some actionable next steps: User:Qcne/AfC_decline#AfC accept. This is pretty complicated as it has some OR IF conditions in the code, so I've just given the plain-text version.
• the Teahouse invite, which hopefully makes it clearer users can go to the AFCHD for draft-questions and the Teahouse for more general-questions: User:Qcne/AfC_decline#Teahouse invite

qcne (talk) 20:00, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

The AfC accept changes are a notable improvement, you certainly are on a roll. NeoGaze (talk) 21:41, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Given the discussion has been open for over a week, and there is a clear consensus for the overhaul, I think it is ready for implementation. Ca ^{talk to me!} 02:51, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I think we are not that many in the discussion right now, and further feedback might improve things further. Can I suggest sending messages for the rest of the members of the AFC wikiproject to invite them to the discussion, in case they haven't seen it? NeoGaze (talk) 11:35, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Not a bad idea—is there an easy way to do this? Ca ^{talk to me!} 11:36, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I was hoping this discussion would alert AfC members! I also want to work on re-writing the unsubmitted and pending templates, so will try and work on that this week. qcne (talk) 11:52, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I can make a post mentioning all current members and requesting their feedback. If there is a better way to do something like this, then please tell me. If not, I will make the post later today. NeoGaze (talk) 12:26, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

You can't mention all current members as mentions are limited to 50. So you would have to use another method. Maybe a mass message sender, but probably not to every possible reviewer as that would be every admin, npp rights holder and the AfC participant list. Maybe to everyone who has done at least one review in the last month (use Quarry to get)? KylieTastic (talk) 12:37, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

How about the December 2025 Backlog Drive participants? Its readily available list of people who are engaged with AfC. Ca ^{talk to me!} 12:45, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I see @GoldRomean: has massmesage sender rights, perhaps he could do something like that? NeoGaze (talk) 15:09, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

For some reason it never actually went through, but I was skimming through the discussions here and just happened to catch this ping :). Unfortunately, I've got the right for other reasons, not because I'm actually very familiar with the tool, so another AfC-minded admin/MMS or WT:MMS is probably the better bet here than I. Since I'm here though, I'll see if I can't comment on this proposal in a bit; looks super promising at a glance! GoldRomean (talk) 22:50, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Please don't ping everyone; we have hundreds of project participants. Those that are (or will be) interested in the discussion will (eventually) see it. This post was made barely a week ago, and there is no rush to get this implemented. The last time we did this sort of thing the discussion was open for almost a month. Primefac (talk) 00:00, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

@Qcne: Given that "Merge/Redirect" is the most common result at Song/Album AfDs ^{(based purely on the unscientific survey method that is my AFD stats)}, I wonder if adding the below to the bottom of the #music may be useful (similar to what's added to #creative)?

In many cases, subjects not notable enough for a standalone article could be incorporated into existing articles instead, such as an album page (for non-noteable songs), or an artist page (for non-notable songs, albums, or band members). Nil🥝 01:23, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Added. qcne (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I think these are all fantastic, especially given that they explain notability requirements better. This is a problem that I've been thinking about every time I submit a notice to users. AfC, Twinkle warnings, and speedy deletions are the most common ways that new editors are introduced to the community, but they can often sound condescending, be confusing, or be full of jargon.

I do have one more thought that I have had in the back of my head for a bit of time now _{(it might just be wishful thinking)}. Regarding the lang decline message, what if we had translations that appear depending on what language the article is in? So for example, if someone wrote a draft in Slovenian and the reviewer marked it as such in the decline message, both messages will appear:

More information Example message ...

Example message

This draft is written in Slovenian. This is the English Wikipedia and we can only accept articles written in the English language. Please provide a high-quality English translation, avoiding machine translation tools (like Google Translate). If you prefer to write in your own language, look for the Wikipedia project in your language on the Wikipedia home page. (some kind of divider) Ta osnutek je napisan v jeziku. To je angleška Wikipedija in sprejemamo lahko samo članke, napisane v angleškem jeziku. Prosimo, da zagotovite visokokakovosten angleški prevod in se izogibate orodjem za strojno prevajanje (kot je Google Translate). Če raje pišete v svojem jeziku, poiščite projekt Wikipedia v svojem jeziku na domači strani Wikipedije.

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If an unrecognized language/code is inputted, then it'll print out only the English message. It would likely require human translators because I don't think using translation tools for these messages are the best idea. Because translating this message into 300+ languages is honestly infeasable, we write up messages for the 10 most common languages in which people do it. Hell, we could even raise this as a possible test case for the Abstract Wiki.

If this is too much work, a complete pipe dream, and/or solving a problem that doesn't exist, at least having the ability to input ISO language codes in the language field would be nice :-) EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 07:33, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I think that's a really cool idea, though no idea if the templates can do that. @Primefac, any thoughts? qcne (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Alternative suggestion could be to have AFCH post one of the WP:WELCOME-FOREIGN templates to the user's talk page along with the decline notices (if that's possible)? Nil🥝 22:09, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I didn't know that existed, that would be a great way. While this wouldn't fit as a decline reason, it would good to paste that automatically in their talk pages. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 22:34, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

We give the option to invite the user to the Teahouse if the welcome has not already been given, so it's not terribly far out of the realm of possibility to add in the option for a welcome template, however much like with the "give them a custom message in their home language" we would need to code in every template and either have a big dropdown to allow selection or hard-code a matching algorithm into the AFCH backend. As with the custom message issue, it's not so much a "can we" as much of a "how long is it going to sit in the request queue because no one wants to actually do it". Primefac (talk) 00:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

"Can" do it? Most likely. I'm not entirely sold on the idea, though, primarily from a maintenance perspective but also because in this day and age everything is automatically translated anyway so us going through and going to the trouble of writing up a dozen different translations is likely a waste of effort. Primefac (talk) 00:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Update as of 2026/01/08

I think that's done, now: User:Qcne/AfC template rewrites.

I've re-written the unsubmitted and pending templates, so that's every single AfC template now re-written in a consistent style. I've also expanded the rationale to give some critical feedback of the re-writes.

What next?

I think it would be good to get some more eyes on this and some specific feedback. I would be open to moving this to a subpage of the Wikiproject. I've also included some Feedback subheadings so anyone can comment on any of the individual re-write blocks.

Happy for this to remain open for a while longer.

Let me know what you think. qcne (talk) 22:00, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Again, basically an almost complete improvement over the original. Ironically, I think the main issue isn't the template messages, but that people don't actually bother to read these messages (or only superficially), and then go around asking why their draft was declined and what can be done so it gets accepted. That has happened me a few times as a reviewer. NeoGaze (talk) 22:59, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Templated messages tend to get glossed over in general. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 22:30, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Just read the revised unsubmitted and pending template messages. Much more friendly and readable. No concerns on my end. Ca ^{talk to me!} 09:38, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Really like the gist of it, although the "bullet points with headers" structure doesn't read as naturally, and removing the bullet point headers or rewording them into the sentences could definitely convince me. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:37, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm also not especially convinced by the standardization of the subject-specific decline templates. Granted, having the main points (such as the need for independent reliable sources) is absolutely an improvement, but you lose important aspects that are relevant to each individual template. To take the very first one as an example, the current "neologism" decline specifically mentions that links to sites specifically intended to promote the neologism itself do not establish its notability, which is an applicable concern, while the new one talks about less specific aspects like press releases, the subject’s own website, or sponsored content, as that wording is shared between templates. It also gives the impression that Wikipedia has a specific notability guideline for neologisms, which isn't actually the case. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:43, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

My thoughts on bullet points + headers is that it's easier to scan for new and ESL editors and gives them clear actions on what to do. I think bullets and headers are the only way to do this? Putting them back into sentences sort of defeats the point of the re-write, I think.

As for unstandardizing: yeah I can do that and make the templates more bespoke. Some of them already are (i.e. NSCHOOL). qcne (talk) 09:43, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

+1 – For me, the bullet points & headers are part of the reason why it's an improvement, as it breaks up the wall of text that contributes to banner blindness whilst allowing for more information to be added. There's already a lot of sentences in the decline templates (a lot of which will go unread by submitters), so bullet pointing the salient points makes them harder to miss. Nil🥝 05:28, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

The bullet points are good, I'm just a bit worried about the headers at the beginning of each. They can be a bit convoluted or even inaccurate (e.g. "Tone" for neutral point of view), and that's not necessarily an impression we want to give. Breaking the list into broader headers is fine though! Here's an example of what I have in mind:

More information Current proposal, Slightly rewritten proposal ...

Side-by-side comparison

Current proposal

Slightly rewritten proposal

Before you submit for review For the draft to be accepted, its topic must meet Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and: Sources: cite multiple published sources that are reliable (with editorial oversight); independent (not connected to the subject); and provide significant coverage. Tone: be written from a neutral point of view. Copyright: be written in your own words. Conflict of interest: if you have a conflict of interest (e.g. you are the subject, an employee, or a relative) or are being paid to edit, you must disclose this to comply with Wikipedia's Terms of Use. Useful guides Your first article: a plain and simple overview of creating a new article. Referencing for beginners: how to add the required citations. Writing better articles: a guide to encyclopedic tone and structure. See examples: browse Featured and Good articles to find high-quality writing on similar topics. Need help? Read our policies: for an overview of our policies and guidelines, see Everything you need to know. About the process: for specific questions on the Articles for creation submission process, ask at the Articles for creation Help desk. General help: for friendly peer support regarding editing, sourcing, or policies, visit the Teahouse, a question and answer hub for new editors. Next steps Edit the draft: click on the Edit tab at the top of the window to add content to your draft. Submit for review: click the Submit the draft for review! button at the bottom of this box. Abandoned drafts: if you do not edit your draft in the next 6 months, it may be deleted. Scam warning If anyone asks you for money or payment to publish, protect, or restore a Wikipedia article or draft, it is a scam. Learn about scams on Wikipedia. Submit the draft for review!

Before you submit for review For the draft to be accepted, its topic must meet Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and: Cite multiple published sources that are reliable (with editorial oversight); independent (not connected to the subject); and provide significant coverage. Be written from a neutral point of view. Be written in your own words, without copyrighted material. If you have a conflict of interest (e.g. you are the subject, an employee, or a relative) or are being paid to edit, you must disclose this to comply with Wikipedia's Terms of Use. Useful guides Your first article: a plain and simple overview of creating a new article. Referencing for beginners: how to add the required citations. Writing better articles: a guide to encyclopedic tone and structure. Browse Featured and Good articles to find examples of high-quality writing on similar topics. Need help? For an overview of our policies and guidelines, see Everything you need to know. For specific questions on the Articles for creation submission process, ask at the Articles for creation Help desk. For friendly peer support regarding editing, sourcing, or policies, visit the Teahouse, a question and answer hub for new editors. Next steps To edit the draft, click on the Edit tab at the top of the window to add content to your draft. Then, click the Submit the draft for review! button at the bottom of this box. If you do not edit your draft in the next 6 months, it may be deleted. Scam warning If anyone asks you for money or payment to publish, protect, or restore a Wikipedia article or draft, it is a scam. Learn about scams on Wikipedia. Submit the draft for review!

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I might also want to link Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide in the "Useful guides" category, or maybe in the bullet point about COI? Otherwise, Qcne's version looks pretty good and is definitely an improvement over the original! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 06:06, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

@Chaotic Enby I've removed the italicised prefixes and adjusted the neologism template. Better? qcne (talk) 15:31, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Looks great now, strong support! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:58, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

It's missing the criteria for secondary sources, which is important. S0091 (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Any suggested wording? qcne (talk) 19:06, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

To keep it from getting wordy, maybe just qualify "multiple published sources" with "multiple published secondary sources? S0091 (talk) 19:11, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Done. I think it still keeps it not too wordy. qcne (talk) 19:25, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Another though (sorry!), for the Need Help section, I think we should focus on pointing people to WP:YFA as much as possible because it provides more detail about the sources requirements and how to build and article. To the end, I would nix the Referencing for beginners as that is covered at YFA. I would change the wording to: Your first article: a simplified overview of the sourcing requirements and how to build new article. S0091 (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd also nix the "For an overview of our policies and guidelines..." bullet. I think we should focus only on the article/draft creation process and the vast majority of new editors submitting draft are only here to try to get their draft published. Also keep in all new editors now get the Growth Features information and tools. S0091 (talk) 20:03, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't think removing that is a good idea, the process creating an article goes under those guidelines same a when just making regular edits (no matter how big or small), talking to other editors, etc. It also discusses things not mentioned in other bullets/links such as proper etiquette or sockpuppetry. NeoGaze (talk) 20:19, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Now that I have followed the link, it's not that bad. I was thinking WP:Policies and guidelines or similar. S0091 (talk) 17:18, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Update as of 2026/01/20

I have added one more decline comment, when a draft is totally unsourced. I often see people use "reliable sources" decline template when they mean "no sources" and hopefully this will clear up some confusion.

User:Qcne/AfC_template_rewrites#nosource

I have re-created the AfC template styles, so you can see what the re-writes would look like in the real world:

User:Qcne/AfC_template_rewrites/sandbox

qcne (talk) 21:10, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Greatly appreciated this new nosource decline, as I had to decline many draft for basically being wholly unsourced. NeoGaze (talk) 21:58, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

(I've already mentioned this off-wiki, but thought it best to share here as well.)

My first thoughts were "yes, great & def useful!", but the more I've thought about it, the more I've come to oppose the addition of a "no sources" decline. A draft without any sources will never* meet our notability criteria, so should always* be given a notability decline. All of the proposed rewrites for the notability declines include some variation of Please add references that meet these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia. which should sufficiently cover unsourced drafts.

The addition of a no sources decline risks reviewers only giving drafts an unsourced decline, when they should also be given a notability decline; this will just mean submitters will continue to work on articles that – even with sources – could still fail our notability criteria. It's an issue that I occasionally see now with drafts receiving LLM declines, when notability should be in play from the get go.

^{*noting that the verifiability decline exists for the very, very rare occasions where a subject would meet notability criteria, but is not supported by reliable sources.} Nil🥝 22:48, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

@Nil NZ I might be a little late (and I don't review articles), but you seem to be saying that a reviewer can tell if the subject is notable (or not) when the draft has no sources. I might be all wrong here, but I thought it was the job of the sources to demonstrate notability.

In your view, does a notability decline come only after the reviewer has determined that no good sources exist to prove notability? (The reviewer might not be able to find all the sources.) The subject of a no-sources draft might, or might not, be notable. We might not know which is the case until we see a well-sourced draft on the same subject.

I think the reviewer can't declare that a subject is not notable, just that notability has not been demonstrated. And thus, "no sources" alone would be a useful decline. David10244 (talk) 08:16, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

@David10244: I thought it was the job of the sources to demonstrate notability – 100% this! Hence, a draft without sources doesn't demonstrate notability, so the current decline templates are still the most appropriate.

In your view, does a notability decline come only after the reviewer has determined that no good sources exist to prove notability? Not quite – when I say "notability decline", I'm using that as shorthand for declining a draft with the template that says notability hasn't been established yet.

A draft without sources may (or may not) be notable, in the exact same way a draft with poor sources may (or may not) be notable; neither are acceptable until they have reliable sources demonstrating their notability.Nil🥝 08:41, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I do think these are great.

The one sticking point I have is that they are a bit long vertically. While I don't think we should remove any content from them, it would be nice to have a [collapse] button at the top right corner. Of course, it would be expanded by default. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 04:01, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

I haven't been aware that this discussion was going on until today. I haven't read the discussion ... uh, actually I haven't even skimread it. I looked at what I take to be the proposed revision (within User:Qcne/AfC template rewrites) of "Draft article not currently submitted for review" (but for all I know might have since been superseded). Some comments:

(If this doesn't belong here, feel free to move it. Or indeed to delete it.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:46, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Hoary, thanks for the valuable feedback. But I wanted to point out you seem to be reading the original templates and not my rewrites? I had them next to each other in a table so readers could compare. Indeed, the existing grammar and style which you've highlighted was difficult to parse was one of the reasons I wanted to rewrite the templates!

I would really appreciate your feedback to the rewrites column? qcne (talk) 09:57, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Qcne, "the valuable feedback" is a delightful way to express "the feedback, utterly worthless other than for giving me a presumably intended laugh". I plead sleepiness. -- Hoary (talk) 10:31, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Second try:

-- Hoary (talk) 11:02, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, @Hoary - I never replied as I went on Wikibreak soon after you commented this. qcne (talk) 20:02, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Qcne, I'd quite forgotten about this. It may not be much more than a month old, but it's as unfamiliar as if a couple of years old. I'll be quiet and let you (or others) get on with the job. -- Hoary (talk) 23:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

In my ongoing effort to rectify the imbalance between the vast amounts of LLM slop flooding the draft queue and the time it takes to review said slop, I wrote a script that adds a "Decline AI" button below the regular AFCH menu. Clicking the button immediately declines the draft with the ai tag and notifies the submitter, exactly the same way the official script would, except it takes 1 clicks instead of 4 ("3 clicks and 4 keystrokes" or "4 clicks and some scrolling" if ai weren't my #1 decline reason). I just created it yesterday so it's very much in a rudimentary state right now, but I will probably update it in the future (for example, to add a second button for notability declines).

I have no idea if this'll be useful to anyone else, but I figured I should post it here in the interest of transparency, on the off-chance that there's some sort of security hole or policy violation caused by it that I'm not aware of. To be clear, you need to have access to AFCH to use this script, as it calls several of AFCH's functions.

Source link: User:Pythoncoder/Scripts/OneClickAFCH.js —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:51, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you!! --bonadea contributions talk 20:21, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Pythoncoder: Hmm, it looks like there is a bug in the script – look at the "ts" and "declinets" timestamps in this decline. In another draft that I declined twice within 20 minutes, the first decline shows the same issue, while the second decline removed the first one and again has messed-up timestamps. --bonadea contributions talk 10:33, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Uh oh. I’ll take a look at it later today. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 10:36, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Bonadea Found the source of the bug: I hardcoded the decline timestamp while testing the code and forgot to change it back for release. Should be fixed now Special:Diff/1343284868 —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 10:52, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Pythoncoder: It looks like there's still something odd happening with that script – it removes older review templates and comments, and now the time stamp is 13 March. Here is an example from today. --bonadea contributions talk 19:19, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

I think I figured out the timestamp problem: the magic word got substituted when I saved the page, so I escaped the braces and now that works fine. Looking into the template removal now. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:44, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

@Bonadea I think it's fixed now? (knock wood) —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:55, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

TheObsidianGriffon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has just been blocked as a sock. They have a number of AfC reviews in their contributions. Flagging in the event someone thinks these reviews need a second look. No opinion as of yet, just recognized the name as a reviewer. Star Mississippi 19:59, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Also AllWeKnowOfHeaven, MightyRanger, MelbourneIdentity, OrangeWaylon and a few others in that SPI. They need removing from WP:AFC/P and mainly their accepts should be scrutinized. HurricaneZeta^C 01:04, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think there's any particular action that needs to be done here regarding their reviews, or I'd have brought it up here myself. It's a socking case, but not one that leads me to think it is worth the effort to re-review. -- asilvering (talk) 03:09, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I've been helping with Draft:Eric John Swanson and User:AllWeKnowOfHeaven did a decline 3 March claiming that the topic may be notable but the content needed work. They used an WP:NPOV decline reason. It is not that unusual for reviewers to be declining stuff they don't like but this reviewer was apparently doing hundreds of these a day during this time. So, yes, I think some review is warranted but I don't know where the manpower for that is going to come from. Authors exposed to this will do what they do which is to either disappear or resubmit with minimal or misdirected changes (and then reviewers sill see the multiple declines and pile on with more declining). ~Kvng (talk) 00:17, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello,

Would someone be willing to take a look at Draft:Anna U Davis?

The draft has been revised following two previous declines to remove promotional language and shorten the exhibition list. It now relies primarily on independent sources including The Washington Post and Feminist Studies.

Thank you for any feedback. ~2026-16078-96 (talk) 18:30, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

This page is for coordination of the AFC WikiProject and its editors; we do not do reviews on-demand. If you have a question about a draft, please ask at WP:AFCHD. Primefac (talk) 21:02, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

We recently discussed the situation where an editor submits a draft that is a partial rewrite of an article, and the agreement is that the draft should be declined and there can be normal discussion and normal editing. However, I would like to know if I can make an exception. There is an existing stub article, and a Class C draft has been submitted. I would like to swap the existing article and the existing draft. Is that a valid exercise of reviewer judgment in some cases? The specific case is the article Viola fuscoviolacea and Draft:Viola fuscoviolacea. Yes, I do know how to do a swap. I am not asking for assistance with the swap, but for advice on whether to do it. I would like to move the existing article into draft space and point it at the article. Is that permitted as a judgment call? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:06, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

You do what you feel is best; there are reasonable arguments to be made for either option. Primefac (talk) 14:57, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I reviewed a draft which had links to the Polish Wikipedia in the lede paragraph. I thought that this was strange enough that I declined the draft with a -custom- explanation. I could have checked whether articles with the same titles existed in the English Wikipedia, but thought that the author should review and fix the links themselves. Was this a reasonable action? Has anyone else encountered this in drafts? By the way, it was Draft:Moi-même-Moitié. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:11, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

A reasonable action, Robert McClenon. I'm pretty sure that several do exist in en:Wikipedia, but I lack the stomach to investigate. If it is helpful to the reader to link to pl:Wikipedia, then I don't see why linking should be done in this way rather than by Template:Ill. But I doubt that it is helpful. And if it were helpful, then why the need to link in the lead? -- Hoary (talk) 05:27, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

But this is the very definition of "easy to fix, nothing to do with notability". Please don't decline drafts for this kind of reason. -- asilvering (talk) 06:42, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. Could have just been fixed. There's certainly good reasons sometimes to have links to pages in other Wikipedias if they don't exist natively (they did in this case), and it being in the lede is not important. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:44, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. While interlanguage links are not ideal, there is no prohibition from having them, and a decline for just that is inappropriate. That's a ten-second fix for a reviewer to change the direct link to an {{ill}}. Primefac (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. In this case we did have a link in the English Wikipedia for this item. The ill template will even fix that for you (I think there's a bot that goes round main space and removes Ill templates for items that do exist). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:56, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Okay. In the future, if I encounter this, I will leave a comment about the interlanguage link for another reviewer to fix. I didn't feel like trying to fix it, and this is a volunteer project. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

It looks like we've created a new defacto quick fail for LLM content. The apparent justification is WP:NEWLLM. I don't know if this has been discussed here but it has not made it to our reviewer instructions. ~Kvng (talk) 21:06, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Are you talking about pythoncoder's optional script or something else? ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 22:14, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

That's part of it and there's the LLM decline reason added to AFCH at some point and there's a pattern of rapid-fire declines using that reason by Pythoncoder and others. Reviewer instructions don't make any mention this, I don't know if authors are given fair warning, and yet it seems to be widespread practice. ~Kvng (talk) 22:22, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

• In line 6 of WP:YFA authors are indeed told not to use LLM. It's also in the "Don't" section. ChrysGalley (talk) 13:08, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I've been reviewing AfC since around the middle of last year and I feel like the LLM decline was already present or may have been introduced at around the same time. It definitely predates NEWLLM. The WP:G15 speedy deletion criterion was added... I think after the LLM decline was introduced, but before NEWLLM. It probably makes sense to align the AfC quick-fail criteria with CSDs.

Reviewers are declining a lot of drafts for this reason because we see a lot of LLM drafts, but there is the danger that the more actual slop you see, the more predisposed you might be to see it everywhere. I haven't installed the one-click decline script because I don't want it to be so easy to make that call. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 22:47, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I can confirm that the LLM decline reason predates the introduction of G15, which in turn predates NEWLLM. The reason why I decline so many drafts for being LLM-generated is because there really are that many LLM-generated drafts. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the last two AFC backlog drives have been just 6 months apart — and we’re already back up to about as many unreviewed drafts now as there were when the last drive started. As for the reviewer instructions, LLMs are fairly new in the grand scheme of things, so it’s only mildly surprising to me that that page hasn’t been updated yet. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:53, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I’ve seen some reviewers outright reject LLM drafts, but I tend to go for a regular decline first because the submitter may not have been aware of the guideline. I recall that not too long ago I read through the instructions users are given before either creating or submitting their draft, and then suggested adding some guidance against using LLMs, but I don’t know what came of that. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 23:00, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

• I don't reject for AI, since the Reviewer Instructions states that is just for irredeemable scenarios. I decline a very high proportion based on AI authorship, because there is a lot of it presented here. But at least in theory the editor can simply re-write their draft themselves, though that is clearly wishful thinking in some cases. I don't also reject AI in borderline cases, or where just one section seems to be LLM. A key problem here is "Subject X was mentioned by A, B and C media outlets", so WP:AIATTR. That isn't summarising and arguably contrary to this project's purpose. This could be argued as a reject basis, but I've not done that.ChrysGalley (talk) 13:04, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

  Whether AI generated or not, WP:AIATTR is basically the advice I've been giving authors. I tell them that establishing notability in a NPOV manner with a short article is where we need to start especially if there is a COI in play. Have I been giving bad advice?

  Per the current reviewer instruction, we're not supposed to decline articles because they are stubby, don't have the right encyclopedic voice or have too many references. Improving these things is something that can get sorted out in mainspace and these flaws do not reflect particularly badly on Wikipedia and do not prevent readers from getting value from an article. ~Kvng (talk) 15:14, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

  @Kvng, I don't think you're giving bad advice per se. Really, you're giving the most important advice. But the community is so hostile to AI of any kind right now, I would be warning people that they really shouldn't be using it at all, right up front. It takes learning to understand how we implement NPOV. "For the love of god don't use AI until you already have a lot of experience with editing" is a simple and usually immediately comprehensible message.

  I agree that we should be adding some explicit guidelines regarding the AI decline on the reviewer instructions page. I would say that AI is a perfectly fine single-reason decline at the same level that npov is: that is, when the article needs so much work it simply should not be accepted and tagged. Someone who used AI to generate an article spent very little time on it. I don't want to ask reviewers to spend any more time than they have to on shovelling those out of the queue. -- asilvering (talk) 16:29, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

  The most frustrating thing with AI drafts is that even if it seems fine, the sources refer to the subject, etc, there's about a 75% chance of any given source not actually verifying the information it's attached to. That means AI drafts have to be gone over with a fine tooth comb and every single statement needs to be checked, which is a huge amount of work for the reviewer (and compounds the more times it goes through review). Human-generated drafts can be spot-checked, and if they've done it correctly in those places we can be pretty confident they know how to source. Plus of course humans frequently understand what needs to be fixed, and AIs...well, they do their best, and often offer some really fun new policies as justification just in case we like those better, so I guess at least there's amusement value. Meadowlark (talk) 08:28, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

  Actually, would it be worthwhile proposing something along the lines of this: if a draft is AI-generated, the first review gets declined with instructions that a human needs to rewrite it; if it's resubmitted and is still clearly AI-generated, it gets rejected. That might balance fairness to draft creators with fairness to reviewers. Meadowlark (talk) 08:34, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

  Apparently because I'm a robot, I personally am not good at distinguishing AI from human prose so I would be at a loss for how to rewrite so that it looks like it was written by a human. ~Kvng (talk) 15:04, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I hope no one's actually accused you of being a robot! Learning to identify LLM text is just another skill that can be practised. See what other AfC reviewers have declined for this reason at Category:AfC submissions declined as a large language model output and try the AI or not quiz for practice. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 23:08, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

No, I made the comment because other editors have made comments that LLM text is obvious and they are certain, based on the text alone, of it's providence. I'm skeptical of these claims because 1/ that is not my experience and, more importantly, 2/ AI is improving very quickly and I don't see any reason any obviousness won't soon be overcome and every reason to believe the certainty experienced by these human editors will likely linger. ~Kvng (talk) 01:31, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

@Kvng Would you say the same after reviewing this example? Your second point is well made, and so for example we don't see so many utm markers these days, but still LLM loves inventing our own categories. ChrysGalley (talk) 12:15, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I got 50% on the AI or not quiz – no better than a coin flip. I don't trust myself to make these calls. ~Kvng (talk) 14:59, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

As I said, it's a skill that you can practise and get better over time. None of us are getting to 100% or even 70% accuracy without practice. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 01:57, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I've heard back from our alleged robot asserting that they are human. Does this change anything? Any advice on what advice I sould give this author? ~Kvng (talk) 16:52, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Both the draft and the author's comments on your talk page, including the denial, absolutely reek of AI (to me). This happens often enough that we have a WP:NOLLMLIARS shortcut. The next step may be WP:AINB if you want to get a third (or more) opinion, or escalate to AN/I if you're feeling confident.

Something else to keep in mind going forward is that WP:NEWLLM has now been amended to cover all article content, not just new articles or drafts. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 22:54, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Honestly, nowadays I just assume everything from new editors is LLM-assisted unless proven otherwise. See Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers#Am_I_crazy_or_are_the_majority_of_new_articles_LLM-assisted? for more info. I think it's getting harder to detect. Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing is basically just telling the LLM what not to do... lol. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:31, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

@WikiOriginal-9, so we should just stop accepting new articles? ~Kvng (talk) 21:17, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

No, I'm just advising caution. Thanks, ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 21:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Wow, tough crowd. I'm inclined to accept this draft and get a read on community sentiment in AfD. I assume at least one of you would be eager to nominate it. ~Kvng (talk) 02:32, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Everyone's AI barometer is calibrated differently, so it's fair to accept a draft that you think should be accepted, as long as you're staying up-to-date with policies. But if you're referring specifically to Draft:Trinnov Audio, it hasn't actually been edited or resubmitted since @Pythoncoder declined it on 10 March. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 02:58, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I mean, AGF it's human-written, does it pass NCORP? Assuming we're talking about Trinnov, everything I'm seeing is either non-independent, not about the company (the product reviews), or WP:CORPTRIV. But I'm sick and a bit whirly so I may have missed something. Meadowlark (talk) 06:23, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Draft:Trinnov Audio. I believe it is WP:UNLIKELY to be deleted for notability concerns. We have identified WP:THREE independent sources. See User talk:Kvng#Inquiry about AfC drafting support for tech company article for details. I'd encourage any discussion specific to the contents of this draft occur on the draft's talk page. ~Kvng (talk) 14:40, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I often review and sometimes accept drafts that have no categories or very few categories. I assume that other reviewers have the same experience. Inadequate categories are not like inadequate references. The AFCH script gives the reviewer the ability to add categories, but I usually think that the gnomes who add categories to articles that are tagged with {{uncategorized}} or {{improve categories}} can do the job of categorizing an article better than I can. So after I accept an article, I refresh the view of the article, and then tag the article either with {{uncategorized}} or {{improve categories}}.

By the way, if you try to tag an article that you have accepted without first refreshing it, you will tag the redirect in draft space, which is not what you are trying to do, and may result in polluted categories. I assume that gnomes will correct the polluted categories, but we don't want to create unnecessary work for gnomes. Gnome time, unlike bot time, is a scarce resource.

This is a request for a feature in the AFCH script, which is boxes next to where we add the categories to check to add the {{uncategorized}} or {{improve categories}} to the article. Can this be done sometime? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:22, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Seconding, I'd love to have a handy checkbox here, since I tend to leave categories for the gnomes. -- asilvering (talk) 02:24, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

My only concern is that this could create bad habits. As neither an NPR nor any particular sort of gnome (or even one who cares much about categories) I would argue that it is trivial to find one category to populate, at least to start off (half the time the shortdesc is a category...) having the field suggest options usually allows me to sort one out fairly quick. Primefac (talk) 08:42, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

That's what I used to do, but I concluded it was counterproductive, because then it's just getting my half-assed attempt and isn't getting flagged for attention by people who actually care a lot about categories. So I started tagging instead, either as "uncategorized" or "improve categories", except for topics I know well. -- asilvering (talk) 13:16, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Very similar: Automatically add {Uncategorized} and {Improve categories}. Was discussed at WT:AFC and declined.

I'm 100% in favor of allowing and even encouraging AFCers to not place categories. Categories are tricky to get right. My best trick is to find a similar article and look at its categories for inspiration. But that takes brainpower, and isn't a mandatory part of the AFC or NPP flowchart, and can be delegated to gnomes. The aforementioned maintenance tags {Uncategorized} and {Improve categories} help with this delegation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:47, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm assuming this was the previous discussion referred to on github?  Courtesy link:  #Categorize the pages you accept

Agree with all of the above. Personally I like adding categories, but that's only because I've now had months of practise; when I was a new reviewer I felt way out of my depth, and even now there are occasions where I'd rather leave it to the experts. Even if we required ^{(we shouldn't)} adding one category as a start point, the option to easily add {{Improve categories}} on acceptance would still be beneficial to both reviewers and gnomes. nil ^nz 23:48, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

There's a BLP draft Draft:Dominik Krause that is needed because the subject was elected to be mayor of Munich yesterday. I was going to create an article, but the edit warning told me that there was a draft here so I'm wondering if it would be ok for me to move the draft to article space or if that would be circumventing the AfC process (which I don't want to do since I'm not a new page reviewer or anything) ScrubbedFalcon (talk) 09:48, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

AFC is entirely optional for experienced editors (with the exception of COI and discretionary restrictions etc), so you're more than welcome to move a draft to mainspace if you believe it's ready nil ^nz 10:20, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if this is a consequence of the new templates being implemented or if it's an old issue that I've never noticed, but I see that this decline message includes the standard "Next steps" section about improving and resubmitting the draft – which is not what I want when I've just said that they should work on the existing article! Oops? ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 12:49, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

The old template had Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved. which is similar in meaning just not quite as prominent. There's probably a way to hide it with a conditional based on the decline code, but it'd probably be more effort than it's worth? nil ^nz 04:03, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I guess it depends on how often "exists" is used compared to other decline reasons – can we even calculate that? ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 04:28, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

According to Category:Declined AfC submissions, there's 480 "already exists" declines, and 176 "needing to be merged" declines.

It's a lot, but still only a small percentage of the 29,900 declines total. nil ^nz 04:36, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Side note Claudine, it's quite frustrating that they put so much work into the draft and none of the previous reviewers had checked for the existence of another page. Perhaps it is because we are Australian and they are not, but I feel as if the sheer widespread presence and knowledge of smoking ceremonies would motivate me to double-check that a page does not exist already. aesurias (ping me in your reply, or I won't see it) (talk) 04:28, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

we are Australian and they are not -- that's probably the crux of it. Australian Indigenous smoking ceremonies does not (at this point in time) exist, so there would be no warning on the draft that a page exists, and it's not terribly obvious that Smoking ceremony would a) exist, or b) be the type of page that would merit an exists decline. If anything I would lament that the writer of the draft didn't do a search before they spent the time and effort to see if something already existed under a different name (because their time is precious too). Primefac (talk) 00:47, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

I was reviewing Draft:Super-rectangle (Numberblocks) and declined it for notability because all the sources went to the same website. However, the source is only available for readers in the UK, so would it be a valid reason to decline for V, verifiability concerns? 🌀Hurricane Wind and Fire (talk) (contribs)🔥 19:13, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Restricted access to a source is not a reason to decline. Many articles require access to sources via the Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library or similar. Also lots of American news sites block access from the EU and UK. I have a private vpn sub just so I could review region locked sources. If you are not sure because of access, just leave for another reviewer that does. In this case not just "all the sources went to the same website" but all primary and zero to show any notability. KylieTastic (talk) 19:18, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

(ec) The physical location of a source(or a geolocked online source) isn't relevant; a source need not be easy or free to access. Someone wanting to verify it could communicate with someone in the UK to examine it(I feel like we have a forum to do something like that but I can't recall it exactly right now), or travel to the UK themselves. 331dot (talk) 19:19, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Were you thinking of WP:RX? Ca ^{talk to me!} 01:56, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

It also requires a TV licence to use BBC iPlayer regardless of the device being viewed from. (perhaps this is why bbc.com redirects to bbc.co.uk for those in UK). At least all the sources were to the BBC which is treated as one source for the purposes of notability so even if independent, it would fail notability. WP:RX may be a useful tool for those who need to access inaccessible sources. This is one reason why quotes may have to be used because when I review GAs/DYKs, it has proof that the user (still) has access to the source. JuniperChill (talk) 20:20, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

If you are experiencing logouts, please post a note at WP:VPT#Logouts, again. S0091 (talk) 19:43, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Hey all, I have been slogging through the AfC queue today and I don't feel confident in noticing the tell-tale AI signs. I applaud the numerous users on here who can call a spade a spade from miles away. I have been able to (at the very least) check links to make sure they aren't hallucinated/404, but I still feel behind. I know that there are several sites on the internet that can tell you what percentage something is written by an LLM. Is this something that we could incorporate into a list like User:RichBot/copyvios does for Copyright Violations using Earwig's CV detector? Thanks for any thoughts, and keep fighting the good fight against slop! Bkissin (talk) 22:50, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

I think the two key problems here are that the best detection software are paid-for products (Winston, GPTZero, Pangram, in my view), so there's a finance issue, someone has to negotiate and then pick up the bill. The free software such as Zerogpt is nothing like as good, false positives and false negatives. The second issue is that with Copyvio, there is only one way out, the editor has to summarise rather than lift the source (hopefully not using LLM....); whereas with LLM usage there are two ways out of the LLM rabbit-hole: a human re-writes the entire article from scratch, given that the recently revised WP:NEWLLM has no wriggle room for 99% of drafts that are not direct language translations. Alternatively the LLM just gets smarter and directly defeats the checks that we deploy, particularly if like Earwig it is a public resource. ChrysGalley (talk) 10:15, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

There used to be a wikipedia.gptzero.me, but no longer. I've asked WMF staff to plug this hole, to no avail. One thing you can look at - which still won't catch all of it because it's not enabled for everyone and it only works for people using Visual Editor - is the tags of the edits, to see if "paste check" shows up. If it does, you know that the author has copy-pasted something into the draft. Of course, that can be done innocently, for example if you've written the draft offline or have copy-pasted quotes from sources. But it's another "objective" tell. Eventually, you'll just get good at spotting the AI signs yourself.

It only really matters if something is AI if it fails our content policies. So if an article's links aren't hallucinated and they verify the text, you don't need to worry about it. -- asilvering (talk) 11:44, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

User:Counterpain99's first action on Wikipedia outside their userspace was to submit Draft:Arthur Chapman (judge), a draft for which they had no prior association. In so doing, they changed the short description of that page to "polo4d login website terpercaya", referencing a spam website also linked by them on their user talk page and in their sandbox. Submitting an unrelated draft (without regard to the state of the draft itself) is, in my experience, an action often undertaken by COI or spam accounts in order to establish an appearance of participation and build a record of activity in preparation for undertaking COI or spam editing. Is there anything we can do to foreclose spammers from undertaking this? BD2412 T 19:39, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Odd submissions from unrelated accounts, along with moves and fake AfC notices, have long been an issue from odd new accounts, but they are probably too varied to be automatically caught and reverted/stopped. Maybe a bot could tag a submission if the submitter was not more than a 5% contributor so that reviewers would be pre warned to check closer. The first edit appeared to be promo, but a very odd choice of place to add it, but their second edit was pure promo. I have warned them and frankly any more post about Polo4d should earn a block. KylieTastic (talk) 21:16, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

I accepted a draft that was in a category for drafts. This resulted in the article being in a category for drafts, and the draft category including an article. I removed the article from the category, and tagged the article for {{improve categories}}, but have a question about automated or semi-automated cleanup. If I understand correctly, the move from the draft namespace to the article namespace created what is known as a polluted category. Are these polluted categories either automatically cleanup by a bot, or listed in a report so that they can be cleaned up by gnomes? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:07, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

There are some database reports on polluted categories, yes. I'm not sure there are any bots specifically for draft-cats-in-articles, though. Primefac (talk) 23:46, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

hey guys, I'm just noticing that AfC submissions is adding up every time, it made me question if this is an all time high? if not when was it and how did we manage to reduce it. Cmajor^ftw 14:14, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

In the Nov-23 drive we started with a huge backlog, did over 12K reviews, and brought it right down to zero. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:23, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

High, but not an all time high, it has been over 5000. However, it is still depressing so see it climb so high so quickly. KylieTastic (talk) 15:08, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Isn't February particularly active for article creation and November not as much? That might explain the plateau on one side and the huge rise on the other. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 12:45, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

I wonder about the concept of auto-declines for those with no content of no references. It's not a large population, but some of the load would go away.

In the emerging days of AI we could also look at 'silliness' before it gets to a reviewer 🇵🇸‍🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦‍🇵🇸 15:17, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

There's so much AI it's ridiculous. I think lot's of stuff goes unnoticed to. It's getting harder to detect. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 19:12, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

seems like a good idea the auto decline Cmajor^ftw 19:24, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Nah... it has yet to reach the 6 months limit. – robertsky (talk) 15:26, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

@robertsky don't you dare jynx it. -- asilvering (talk) 18:59, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

@Asilvering its a slo... – robertsky (talk) 19:45, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

The prior thread made me wonder: when we experience precipitous increases in the backlog, is it the result of decreased reviewing, increased submissions, or both? We already have a running chart for the backlog, is there any way for us to add another graph with two lines: reviews, and new submissions. We of course already track the new submissions number. But how hard would it be to track the reviews? I'm thinking we don't necessarily have to differentiate between kind of review, just at the start of the day, did Draft:Foo have an unreviewed submission, and did it not at the end of the day? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:48, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Or I guess the simpler mathematical approach is just (amount backlog changed from yesterday) - (submissions) = |reviews| CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:03, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

It's difficult to get exact numbers here because of deletions, resubmissions, and drafts that are reviewed on day 0 (which is most drafts). -- asilvering (talk) 20:23, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

I used to keep some fairly in-depth stats about this sort of thing, and the short answer is basically "on average, we get more submissions than we review". I know this seems somewhat obvious (since new minus reviewed is clearly positive) but that is kind of The Answer. As a note, I do say "on average", because while some months we have more reviews than submissions, over a long enough time period those small gains are outweighed by others months with more submissions. Primefac (talk) 20:31, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Just to flag that @DoubleGrazing: and I have both had AFCH not properly pasting declines on to the submit editors' Talk pages. Inconsistent since my first one worked, and DG's did not on the same draft. Approx 1 in 5 occurrences in my case. It then means reviewers may want to do a manual entry instead. ChrysGalley (talk) 11:10, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

How quickly do you move away from the page after you have declined? DGG used to have this problem in the past as he would often decline and then (almost) immediately close the window before things actually went through. Does the script say that the user talk message has been left? Primefac (talk) 11:34, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Only happened to me once (that I know of), and no I didn't move away from the page quickly. The script said something to the effect of failed to notify user, API db error summat summat. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:39, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Same for me and I think I've had 3 occurrences out of 18 reviews this UK morning. I don't think it's about speed at my end, since the error "api DB" appears while the other lines are getting populated, so the error is shown before I see the line about my AFC log file getting updated. Has a latency feel to it. ChrysGalley (talk) 11:47, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Just checked and your AfC log has grown quite long; may be worth setting up archiving to see if that might fix things? nil ^nz 11:51, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Is it just within the 90 minutes or so? We're in the middle of a minor outage right now, judging from the comments left on phab:T422130. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:55, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

My decline is timestamped 12:01 (UTC+1, presumably). -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:41, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Ironically enough, as I was posting that comment, I got [195e7548-6cce-485c-9cc8-96f07eb363ef] Caught exception of type Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBConnectionError -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:43, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Gonna make me math, are ya? Do you think that was within about 2.5 hours of now, or earlier? :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:03, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't know! I 'spose. (Maybe.)

When we (UK) switch to daylight saving time, some timestamps are in UTC, some are in UTC+1, and I've no idea why that is, or whether I can do something about it. The ones on talk pages like this very helpfully say 'UTC', but the contribs list and rev history timestamps say nothing.

Anyway, I declined a draft maybe 10 mins ago, and now realise the decline didn't get posted on the user's talk, so this may still be ongoing? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:33, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeap. Still ongoing. I had to press "reply" to my last message 5 times to get it to post. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:39, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:VPR § A new system of permissions for article creation. This might be of interest for AfC reviewers. Athanelar (talk) 15:01, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions/Copyright cleanup instructions

Point (iv) here doesn't seem correct. If an editor changes the template param from cv to cv-cleaned then the message on the page then displays

"This submission has now been cleaned of the above-noted copyright violation and its history redacted by an administrator to remove the infringement. If re-submitted (and subsequent additions do not reintroduce copyright problems), the content may be assessed on other grounds."

The second point about the history is obviously not the case until the revdel has been completed.

I submit that point (iv) should be removed entirely, as the admin performing the revdel should change that after completing the process. The copyvio tag should be left as cv. Mfield (Oi!) 00:13, 5 April 2026 (UTC) Link to the cv cleanup added for clarity, no content change. Primefac (talk) 16:59, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Or alternately it's the AFC template that needs correcting so it doesn't display that, if editors are being encouraged to flag the copyvio template as cv-cleaned. Mfield (Oi!) 00:56, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Point iv cannot be taken in isolation. The preceding steps involved a) removing the copyvio and b) tagging the page for {{revdel}}. An admin will remove the revdel request when the content has been hidden, but from a non-administrative perspective, the draft has been cleaned of copyright violations. Primefac (talk) 17:01, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

OK point noted about administrative vs not. I am only looking at it through an admin lens. Maybe it could be reworded to say

"This submission has now been cleaned of the above-noted copyright violation and its history will be redacted by an administrator to remove the infringement. If re-submitted (and subsequent additions do not reintroduce copyright problems), the content may be assessed on other grounds."

Mfield (Oi!) 18:36, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Sounds sensible to me. I always found that decline very confusing as a reviewer. -- asilvering (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah, okay, I see the issue. cv says "clean this up now!" whereas cv-cleaned implies that all stages of cleanup have occurred (including revdel which may still be pending). I think the better solution would be to word along the lines of "cv has been removed, but if it isn't RD'd yet please switch it back to a cv decline" maybe? That way the administrator only has to do the revdel without worrying about messing about with the template, but interested editors can still do a quick check if they so desire. Primefac (talk) 23:32, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Yep, I don't really have any strong opinion on which aspect of it should be changed, except that the reviewer instructions and the displayed message end up aligning and reflecting the actual status. My anecdoatal experience of dealing with RD1 requests (both AFC and others) is that most reporters set the tag only to cv. The situation that brought this up for me the other day was that I responded to a couple of reports where the same reviewer has set them to cv-cleaned already. This appeared unusual to me so I asked them about it and they pointed me to the instructions. That's the reason I figured that the instructions needed updating tbh, as they didn't seem to match the spirit of the tags or the way most editors interpret them at least. Mfield (Oi!) 01:00, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I had previously assumed the administrator doing the revdel was supposed to change it from cv to cv-cleaned to guarantee it had been done - is there an edit filter or something that prevents removal of the {{cv-revdel}} template? ScalarFactor (talk) 03:05, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

That is what I always assumed also yes and that is what I do in other circumstances when I am needing to leave the copyvio template for some other reason. But when i complete an RD1, normally via script, hitting complete on the process removes the copyvio template anyway.

The primary concern here though is that the instructions tell reviewers to set the template to cv-cleaned when before the revdel is actually completed. So when the admin responding, or anyone for that matter, looks at the article, the AfC decline box shows a message saying that the article history has been cleaned when it hasn't. So really it's about changing that instruction so that the copyvio template gets put on as just cv. Which seems to be a common practice already outside of editors who are strictly following the instructions, as maybe a lot of those people realized that incorrect message then appears. Mfield (Oi!) 03:25, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

To answer the other part of the question, there's no edit filter preventing a {{cv-revdel}} template from being removed, but if the person removing it isn't an admin or NPR it'll be tagged by filter 856. That filter gets patrolled semi-regularly so it'll likely be caught eventually if someone does remove the template. Obviously it's ideal for it to be fixed immediately though, so personally I always temporarily watchlist pages that I've tagged for RD1. MCE89 (talk) 03:31, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Is there an option to undo a waiting submission? As a mentor, I sometimes advise mentees that their drafts are hopeless (not in those words) and rather than wait another month or two for the inevitable decline, they should withdraw it and work on the draft now rather than months down the road. Withdrawal would also save an Afc reviewer from wasting their time. This was discussed once in 2009 and opinions then were mostly that it was too rare a situation to bother about.

It isn't that rare now, imho, as I come across this situation frequently. Any interest in having another look at this? Alternatively, if my mentee agrees, I am inclined to implement the withdrawal by simply removing the timestamped {{AFC submission}} template at the top of the page (the one that has the hidden comment, <!-- Do not remove this line! --> ) and replacing it with {{AfC submission/draft}}. Otoh, if the timestamped submission causes some external action such as adding a timestamped control field to an entry in a database or project page that would then be orphaned by removal of the template with the matching timestamp, then I won't, but otherwise, I cannot see any reason not to remove the line and save everybody from wasting their time. Mathglot (talk) 21:13, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't believe there's any issues removing AfC templates like that. We generally tell editors not to remove previous declines, but as an optional process for autoconfirmed editors they're free to remove the templates and just move it to mainspace themselves, for example. ScalarFactor (talk) 00:37, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

AFAIK, reverting the submission (if still possible) will just withdraw it from the pool as if it was never there. Or you could manually delete the AfC templates altogether. I don't think either would cause any problems, and if it's clear (say, from an edit summary) that it was done for a reason, then I doubt anyone here would try to undo such an edit or otherwise take issue with it.

FWIW, I for one very much welcome such input, as well as commending you for making an effort to work with novice users in this way. Submitting a draft prematurely helps no one and only causes frustration and extra work all around. Plus, with guidance from an experienced user such as you, the new editor will surely go through a much smoother learning curve, which can only be a good thing. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 05:37, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Three options, all of which are valid:

• Undo the edit that submitted the draft (could be blocked by intermediate edits)
• Add t to the first parameter of the {{AfC submission}} template (e.g. {{AfC submission|t|...}})
• Replace the {{AfC submission}} template entirely with {{AfC submission/draft}}

At the moment there is no script-assisted way to perform any of these actions, so it will have to be done manually. Personally my preference would be for the third option since it makes for a cleaner resubmit if/when that comes. Primefac (talk) 11:32, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, both. Bullet #3 (replace with {{AfC submission/draft}} ) was my intended action (I have it in my tips file as the end result of {{subst:AfC draft}} ), so I will likely go with that one. I'll look into adding something like this to the doc somewhere. I think it may more properly belong on the WP:Mentorship page than on an Afc doc page as it is out-of-process for Afc, but appreciate any suggestions on where it should live. I'm thinking a brief mention or link at Help:Drafts (perhaps at § Moving drafts to mainspace ) and WP:User pages (perhaps § Userspace and mainspace ). Mathglot (talk) 17:52, 14 April 2026 (UTC)