Archives

July 2003 – April 2005 May 2005 - December 2006 December 2005 - July 2007

Is peer review dead? I hadn't used it for awhile when I posted Pettit Memorial Chapel, an important Frank Lloyd Wright building, for peer review on July 8. The only response I received was 8 days later asking if I queried WikiProject Architecture, which I did that day. Over a week later and nothing has been said in its review. Considering I have raised almost 20 articles to GA by myself and am on the cusp of my first FA I suppose I don't need to use this feature but peer reviews have oft pointed out things that I, as a main author, have overlooked. It is sad to see that peer review has died. IvoShandor 02:13, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, dead. : ( IvoShandor 06:52, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I have a few ideas to enliven it. Namely, a wikiproject overwatching it, and enforcing stricter rules... Wrad 22:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

A response! Hooray! That would be good, I wonder how others feel, as is I am less prone to contribute to reviews because mine are summarily ignored, even when I do. If I get reviews, my policy has always been to review an article or two, often for those who do my review. I used to come in and do a slew of 'em but became really frustrated by the lack of response. This part of the project is far too valuable to lose. I would join any WikiProject aimed at saving it. IvoShandor 23:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that peer review would greatly benefit if it was sorted by subjects. That way a editor can review articles that they are interested in. (similar the AFD sorting). Jon513 23:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I was also thinking of having different degrees of reviews. One for those just trying to get started, one for those aiming for GA, one for those aiming for FA... Wrad 00:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

A past attempt to divide peer review into several groupings showed that the only "benefits" received were additional confusion by request submitters on how to add an entry and a significant increase in the effort required to perform archiving and other maintenance. This is because most reviewers concentrate on the top few requests at the top of the page when looking for an article to review while entries further down the page have great difficulty receiving an initial comment. Due to my memory of dealing with and then cleaning up this past attempt, I will not support a repeat of this experiment. This means that anyone wishing to implement the type of reorganization being proposed is also volunteering to take over the daily maintenance work required to implement archiving and cleanup of improperly submitted requests. --Allen3 ^talk 17:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Per Ivo's original comment, I sometimes have more luck with reviewing other's articles first and then politely asking them to review mine. Mind you, some editors never seem to look at their peer review requests again (not aimed at anyone recently!) so it doesn't always work. :) 4u1e 12:25, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Not sure if additional instruction creep is what we need (i.e. sorting peer reviews) but I still think that a project could be helpful, it would give the people who enjoy doing peer reviews a place to congregate and somewhere to coordinate backlog elimination drives (A recent one I noticed at WP:GAC really cleaned up the backlog there, and they do have a affiliated WikiProject. This seems like a logical step to me, any thoughts? Any one willing to do the construction and proposal and such? IvoShandor 19:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it is an excellent idea to divide the peer reviews by topic like they have done at GAC (although I would suggest broader topics than they have - the recent change was detrimental, I think). I tend to review history and literature articles, so I am continually scrolling to see if I missed something interesting on this page. I review much more at GAC since it is easier to identify articles that I would be good at reviewing. Awadewit | talk 06:02, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Would anyone have a problem with making the TOC float on the right side of the page, next to all the reviews (something similar to editor review)? I would be bold and do it, but it seems a little big to be bold about, so I've brought it here. All comments appreciated. Sebi _[talk] 08:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

You do know you can modify your personal style sheet to accomplish the same thing, correct? Gentgeen 11:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh, I posted this thread what seems like ages ago. Yes, I do know I can muck around with it, but it's not much of a problem now anyway. Sebi _[talk] 05:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I created a template ({{UrgentPR}}) to help assist in listing some peer reviews that have stuck around for awhile and have received no reply. I have seen a few of these for FACs and FAR and they were placed in the user space. I'm not sure if there is something against these templates being used in the template space so they were moved to the user space. Sebi _[talk] 05:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I have never closed a peer reveiw. However, I know that Wikipedia:Peer review/Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has not been closed properly. I was cleaning up its talk page and noticed. Could someone please close it or leave a note on my talk page how to do so. There is no procedure at Wikipedia:Peer review/Request removal policy and I don't want to leave out any steps.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

All reviewers taking part in WP:FAC, WP:GAN, and WP:PR, are encouraged to take a look at Wikipedia:Content review/workshop. While there's no specific proposals on changing anything currently, we're trying to initiate a friendly discussion regarding the review processes on wikipedia as a whole, and how to improve all of them. Dr. Cash 18:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Reform of peer review is currently under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content review/workshop. DrKiernan 08:12, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I have been transluding the WikiProject Biography peer reviews to this page by hand since the bot that used to do it shut down. Would anyone object to me editing the bottom of the Peer review instructions as below? It would enable me to stop transcluding the WikiProject Biographies to this page, as they would show up in the announcement list at the bottom of the instructions template instead. DrKiernan 08:12, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Related pages:

Topic-specific peer reviews (full list):

Biography peer reviews: Romano Volta • Suzanne Carrell • Mullá Husayn • John Gilchrist (linguist) • Thomas Brattle •

I would recommend holding off on making major modifications to the page, pending outcome of the above-mentioned discussion on reforming the PR system overall. One of the discussions being talked about is a category-based listing of articles at PR, similar to WP:GAN, which would improve on this. And we're talking about increased bot maintenance for this as well. So please hold off pending the outcome of these discussions. Thanks! Dr. Cash 18:11, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned a couple of threads up, changes to reinvigorate Peer review have been under discussion at Wikipedia:Content review/workshop, especially on its talk page. As the discussion there is stalling, I thought it worthwhile to bring ideas here for implementation (though I see this is far from an active talk page). The simplest and hardest to argue with change is introducing categories on this page, thus making it more browsable. (Indeed, given that this regularly approaches 200 reviews, I am surprised it hasn't been done before.) The majority was in favour WP 1.0 hierarchy:

Arts · Language and literature · Philosophy and religion · Everyday life · Society and social sciences · Geography · History · Applied sciences and technology · Mathematics · Natural sciences

A minority favoured the FA categories:

Art, architecture and archaeology · Awards, decorations and vexillology · Biology and medicine · Business, economics and finance · Chemistry and mineralogy · Computing · Culture and society · Education · Engineering and technology · Food and drink · Geography and places · Geology, geophysics and meteorology · History · Language and linguistics · Law · Literature and theatre · Mathematics · Media · Music · Philosophy and psychology · Physics and astronomy · Politics and government · Religion, mysticism and mythology · Royalty, nobility and heraldry · Sport and recreation · Transport · Video games · Warfare

New votes (or any objections) are welcome. It can be done quite easily and, I think, without any extraneous problems created. I don't think it would affect the bot that does automated reviews, though someone should confirm that. Marskell 08:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Forgot to mention the mock-up: Wikipedia talk:Content review/workshop/Peer Review mockup Marskell 08:42, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

• Support And favor the WP1.0 categories over the more complex FA categories. I think this is the best way to increase expert participation in the peer review process. It will also be easier to see which categories have a larger backlog so that we can direct review requests and participation drives in areas that are needed more. Dr. Cash 21:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

• Support. This seems like a step in the right direction. Perhaps we could also figure out a way to notify editors and Wikiprojects when an article in their area of expertise is up for peer review. --JayHenry 22:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged WP:SPR as inactive. As much as I'd love to see a scientific peer review on Wikipedia, it appears that page is defunct. The last conversations on the talk page occurred in July, and the last scientific peer review posted there which received actual feedback was Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Therapies for multiple sclerosis (and the actual review came from the Peer Review page anyway; the page wasn't linked to SPR until after the single, automated comment was made).

There's no point in having people wait months on end to have articles reviewed, and it would be better to keep the few active peer review volunteers on the same page. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd strongly agree with this, folding it into gen PR seems the best way to go. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Of course, it's been reverted, and by someone who hasn't been actively reviewing the articles... *sigh* Firsfron of Ronchester 21:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, I was the editor who reverted this. First, I review scientific review articles only if they are about subjects that,as a scientist, I am familiar with. Unfortunately, no such articles have been put to scientific peer review for some time. I have been maintaining the scientific peer review for a long while, but I have been unable to do so recently due to a wikibreak as I went overseas and then being busy and ill since my return. I have tried to remove all old reviews and to also transclude new requests for review to WP:PR. I reverted the "inactive tag" because I do not think it is appropriate. Yes, this review process has problems and in fact it always has had. The initial discussions discussed such things as an elected board of reviewers and the appointment of other expert reviewers. In the end no agreement was reached, except that we agreed to try a low key version. That is what we have. It does attract some articles for review, but they are often inappropriate for a real review. You can have requests for review but that does not always attract reviewers, even on WP:PR itself. I am going to do the following:

1. Cleanup the current reviews, archiving old ones and also transcluding new ones to WP:PR.
2. Suggest on the WP:SPR page that new requests for review should also be transcluded to WP:PR.
3. Set out the difficulties on the talk page of WP:SPR and then ask all the science Wikiprojects to go over there and join the debate. (Note that the list of articles for review at WP:SPR is transcluded into many of the Science WikiProject pages.)
4. If this does lead to more good activity, then I will propose that WP:SPR should be deleted.

However, give me a bit of time to this. I am still busy.--Bduke 03:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not so sure having a separate 'scientific peer review' page is really what we want. Participation is down across all three of the major review areas (WP:FAC, WP:GAN, and WP:PR). The best way to increase participation in the three core programs is not to dilute potential reviewers into a whole different process. Plus, there's likely to be a proposal coming through very soon to institute categories at WP:PR, much like the category listing at WP:GAN. If this goes through, scientific articles will be grouped together, making them easier for experts to locate. This seems like a much better solution than a whole separate process for 'scientific peer review'. Dr. Cash 08:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

You make some good points. However the first sentence suggests that the scientific peer review is a new suggestion. The reality is that it is an old suggestion that has never really worked. I am trying to sort that out. The important point you make is that interest in reviewing things has declined. That is depressing, but interesting and a point we have to address.. Reviewing what we do has to be the way forward. The scientific review process was a discussion about how to get experts to review things. As always, we on WP have never been able to progress that point. It is one of our key tensions. We want to be completely democratic, yet we want to get our articles right. As an professional scientist and a keen wikipedean I am torn on this issue. We are not going to resolve it easily. --Bduke 11:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I have now completed steps (1) to (3) of the process I set out above by adding something like the paragraph below to Wikipedia Talk:Scientific peer review and to nine Science WikiProject talk pages. Please feel free to copy it elsewhere

This Scientific Peer Review project can hardly be called successful. While there have been a steady but small flow of articles submitted for review, the actual reviews have been either non-existent or in no real way different from those done through the standard Wikipedia:Peer review process. Some editors will recall that the project was started with an enthusiastic discussion about identifying expert reviewers through an elected board. Unfortunately as time went by, it became clear there was no consensus on whether we had a board, or on how it was to be set up or on what it was supposed to do. There was also a lack of consensus on what "sciences" we were covering, and on many other aspects. In the end we sort of lapsed into a minimal review process which has staggered on for about 18 months. I think it is time we decided what to do about the project. Unless people can come up with a new way forward and enthusiastically implement it, I think we have to declare that this project be no longer active in any sense and that editors should ask for review at WP:PR. I am posting this on the talk pages of the major Science WikiProjects. Please feel free to publicize it elsewhere. Please add you comments at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review#Is this inactive?. --Bduke 02:10, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Scientific Peer Review has now been declared inactive and reviews on scientific articles will be directed here. --Bduke (talk) 22:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A new page has been created to list users who have volunteered to be contacted on their talk page to do peer reviews: Wikipedia:Peer review/volunteers. The page was created after discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content review/workshop, a page devoted to trying to improve review processes such as peer review. The page now has quite a few volunteers who have signed up, and I think it would be good to add a link to it from the PR instructions.

The instructions live in Template:PR-instructions. How about changing the first paragraph under "Nomination procedure" to say "Anyone can request peer review. Users submitting new requests are encouraged to review an article from those already listed, and encourage reviewers by replying promptly and appreciatively to comments. You may also contact a volunteer peer reviewer directly; see the list of volunteers"?

-- Mike Christie (talk) 13:17, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I tried to cleanup the nomination for User:Twelsht but for some reason the header won't appear above the comments. Any ideas? Thanks --Daysleeper47 (talk) 17:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Disregard. I see I accidentally deleted the header on the PR page. Cheers, Daysleeper47 (talk) 17:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Is is fine to nominate an article for PEER REVIEW even though a POV tag is still attached? BritandBeyonce (talk) 10:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing in the peer review rules and guidelines preventing such an article from being submitted. That being said, peer review is not designed to resolve POV issues in an article and a POV tag may also serve to scare off potential reviewers. If the article's primary problem is POV related then resources such as Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, Wikipedia:Requests for comment, or Wikipedia:Dispute resolution may better serve your needs. --Allen3 ^talk 12:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. BritandBeyonce (talk) 00:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Some editors working on Peer Review will be aware that there is an idea in the works to automate the generation of the PR page. At the moment the Peer Review process requires nominators to (1) add a template to the talk page, (2) create a Peer Review subpage for the article, and then (3) "transclude" the subpage onto the PR page by pasting "{{Wikipedia:Peer review/ARTICLE NAME}}" to the top of the nominees list.

One of the goals of automation is to eliminate this final step (3), and ensure that the first two steps are completed correctly. A secondary goal is to remove one step from the archiving of Peer Reviews, by automating the removal of the transcluded subpage from the PR page.

OK, enough technobabble. Take a look at User:Geometry guy/Peer review. You will find it is extremely similar to the current Peer Review list. There are some very minor differences. First, there are differences towards the beginning of the list: this is because PR nominators have not carried out the three steps correctly, by omitting step (1) or step (3) (e.g., someone has attempted to reopen the Peer Review of Discrete Bipolar Transistor Biasing). I believe some editors here have already been using User:Geometry guy/Peer review to identify such errors. Second, there are one or two minor changes or ordering, because User:Geometry guy/Peer review lists the articles in the order in which step (1) is carried out, while this page (provided editors follow the instructions) lists articles in order of step (3). Finally, User:Geometry guy/Peer review only lists Peer Reviews, not WikiProject Peer Reviews, which are sometimes (but not reliably) added here: I can't find any examples at the moment. However, the same mechanism could also list such Peer Reviews (reliably!) on the PR page in a separate section.

The main difference between the PR page and User:Geometry guy/Peer review, of course, is that the latter is created automatically, rather than by hand. In fact, the page has only been edited once since I got it working a month ago, yet it has been tracking the Peer Review list since then. The page gets its data from a bot, called VeblenBot, which (thanks to Carl(CBM)) examines the content of Category:Requests for peer review every hour. If there are any new articles there (because {{peer review}} has been added to a new talk page), they are added to the Peer Review list.

I would like to propose using this technique to automatically generate the PR page. It would save a great deal of effort: nominators would have one less step to do; there would be less potential to make nomination errors (saving time on fixing these errors); and archiving a Peer Review would require one less edit. I welcome discussion and questions about the proposal. Geometry guy 20:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Good, there is an example of the third difference now, as American Top 40 has been listed here as a Wikipedia:WikiProject Radio Peer Review. As I said above, such WikiProject Reviews could be tracked in a separate section. Geometry guy 22:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm in favour of automation. DrKiernan (talk) 08:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've tracked and tested the automated page against the peer review page for a while now, and think it is ready to try. I have updated the peer review guidelines at User:Geometry guy/Peer review to reflect this potential change. As with any change, there will be teething problems, and it is important that the guidelines minimize the problems, so I need other editors to comment on the revised instructions and improve them.

The revised guidelines also explain archiving more carefully and suggest a more robust archiving procedure. Ideally, archived articles should be moved to an archive subpage immediately, to provide a permanent link. For regular archivists this is extra work, and is not essential, as it can be fixed by GimmeBot later anyway. But I think it is important clarify these issues, because I've noticed mistakes being made when peer review nominations have previous peer reviews. Geometry guy 01:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I've now implemented the automation of the PR list. As promised above, there will surely be teething problems, but I've tried to add guidelines and source code comments to minimize these. One potential problem concerns page moves: if a page is moved during a peer review, then the peer review subpage needs to be moved too. Fortunately this is a fairly rare occurence. A bigger issue concerns the idea of a permanent link. Unfortunately some newsletters, posted on multiple talk pages, link to peer reviews. Fixing these links when a peer review is archived is a pain, so until such fixes are automated, we have to live with an imperfect system. Geometry guy 21:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am surprised the PR (and FAC) nomination process does not include this key element: the nominator could be expected to provide a list of pages on which the nominator (or a bot) will announce the nomination and invite readers to respond. Proposals for new Usenet newsgroups have worked that way for over a decade; the proposer is expected to develop a list of newsgroups and e-mail discussion groups where it would be appropriate to post a notice of the proposal. --Una Smith (talk) 05:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Editors may be interested in the discussion that is starting here. Happy‑melon 12:41, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Presumably this problem is related to the recent changes. Whenever I try to click the edit link for a given peer review I get the following message:

You tried to edit a section that does not exist. Since there is no section 1, there is no place to save your edit. Sections may have been removed after you loaded the page; try purge and bypass your browser cache.

Return to Template:CF/Requests for peer review.

Neither purging nor bypassing cache have had any effect. I can get around this by clicking the direct link on the {{peerreview}} template on an article's talk page, but it is hardly ideal. Oldelpaso (talk) 17:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks for drawing attention to this. This wasn't caused by the recent changes directly, but by an edit I made yesterday to the template that displays the peer review entries. I think I've fixed it now: let me know if there are still problems. Apologies for the temporary inconvenience, and thanks again. Geometry guy 19:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It is working now. Thanks. Oldelpaso (talk) 09:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

No problem. My excuse for fiddling with the template is in the next section. Geometry guy 00:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The automated listing of peer reviews presents the opportunity to provide the peer review information in several different formats at no extra cost. The system is quite flexible, so I've tested out a couple of uses. The first is a peer review list, which provides links to peer reviews and articles under peer review. The second is an automatic list of recent peer reviews, which can be transcluded anywhere. Both of these can be modified to suit editors needs. Are these potentially useful? If so, how might they be improved? Are there any further suggestions? Geometry guy 00:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I read that I should respond to a peer review request by reviewing "one of the articles below". Why are there no more peer reviews on Wikipedia:Peer review that I can respond to? – Ilse@ 13:04, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Anything happening? DrKiernan (talk) 11:02, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Is anyone else uninspired by the new system? It now takes three clicks to get to an individual review and you can't easily glance through any other reviews. Peanut4 (talk) 18:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

This is related to the previous thread on archiving. Basically, this page has depended on the generous efforts of Allen3 to archive old peer reviews, but he hasn't done this since 18 December. Consequently there are now too many peer reviews to list on the peer review page and the software is replacing the transclusions by links. (Technically, the post-expand include limit has been exceeded.) What you are currently seeing is not how the page is meant to look. In fact it is meant to look identical to the old peer review page, and did until yesterday. I'll see if I can fix it, but I expect the only solution is to archive some old peer reviews. Geometry guy 18:37, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a temporary problem, which we will be able to resolve. One option is to move peer reviews to a subpage when they grow too long for transclusion here (the same thing happens on RFA and other pages that transclude a lot of subpages - very long RFAs are not transcluded on the main RFA page). — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)