Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:04:34 UTC
(First bug report, sorry) This is for Wikipedia, but likely also for any other wiki running on the 'Pedia's current MediaWiki configuration. On Wikipedia, New Pages in the Main namespace are logged at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Newpages. There are also New page logs for other namespaces. In my experience, New Page patrol is one of the more underutilized "patrols" Wikipedians make. If an article from a hit and run contributor has no wikilinks, and isn't linked to, it is entirely possible that the article can go un-noticed until stumbled upon randomly. Best case scenario is that this article will silly vanity or bad vandalism. Worst case is that it will be an ad or pure libel, so New Page patrol is vital for catching these. That said, something occured to me and I tried out a little expirement. I created a subpage of my user page, and then simply moved it to the article namespace. I then checked the New Page log, and it was not there. One can see how a user can hide a new article from the New Page log. And logically, if [[User:JoeSchmo/Halawazam]] is moved to [[Halawazam]], Halawazam *is* a new article and should be logged. That is not to say that the action is not logged somewhere - naturally it is in the Move log, and the creation of the user sub-page is in the User space New Page log. But, with more eyes needed on New Page patrol, how many are watching the User Space New Page Log? And how many are watching the Move Log? Needlessly long story short, whenever a page is moved into a different name space, it should be logged on that Name Space's associated New Page log. Thanks for the time, Jeffrey O. Gustafson Inconsequential Admin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jeffrey_O._Gustafson
From [[Wikipedia:Bug_reports]]: "Ettiquete: Contribute useful comments; useless comments (i.e. advocacy) increase the signal to noise ratio." Sorry about the fluff at the beginning. Jeffrey O. Gustafson Inconsequential Admin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jeffrey_O._Gustafson
Not sure if this would necessarily be a problem on most wikis, but I do agree that this should be fixed in new page patrol (would it hurt to have newpage patrol cover all namespaces? This would also allow articles accidentally created in namespaces, i.e. something like [[Help: The Beatles album]] or [[Wikipedia: An essay by Bob]])
Although this is an enhancement in some sense, I'd consider this to be more of a general bug (hence the change, in case anyone was wondering).
Fixed by Rob Church, apparently.
(In reply to comment #4) > Fixed by Rob Church, apparently. It was?
No, I'm an idiot. All you added was namespace filtering of the new page log. It fixes part of the problem, but what Jeffrey wanted was the logging of page moves in the log. Reopened, I guess.
This has started to be an actual vandalism concern now, rather than a hypothetical: see [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Vanity page creators bypassing new page patrol]] and the examples listed there (namely [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=move&user=Doberman316&page=] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Cupton]).
We need this. I've recently killed a bunch of vanity/crud pages, by patrolling the move log, which were created in the user space and then moved after a delay into the mainspace. While at first I feared posting on the noticeboard because it might attract the wrong kind of attention, I thought it much better to have more eyes on the move log. Putting these pages into the regular new pages bin would be a much better solution. Thanks to anyone who takes this on.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Logically, moved articles are not new: they've been there the whole time. This is how we currently treat them at all levels. Needless to say, move logs need to be patrolled too to protect against this, just as all changes do: not everything is in one log, for good reason. You might want to request that the move log be filterable on the target namespace (not that that's likely to happen soon). I suggest WONTFIX.
(In reply to comment #9) > I'm not sure I agree with this. Logically, moved articles are not new: they've > been there the whole time. This is how we currently treat them at all levels. > Needless to say, move logs need to be patrolled too to protect against this, > just as all changes do: not everything is in one log, for good reason. You > might want to request that the move log be filterable on the target namespace > (not that that's likely to happen soon). > > I suggest WONTFIX. But it's not the article that's new - it's the article title. It seems to me that the creation of a new title (as previously there was only one - the article - and now there's the article plus a redirect) should generate an instance in the new pages log.
You could argue either way. I would say that the purpose of the new page log is to track new content, not new titles. New pages need to be tracked because they're more likely to deviate from site policy, as changes aren't woven into existing material; and because they aren't on anyone's watchlists. Neither of these is a concern for moved pages per se, although in certain rare cases it can be. If anything, I would say that effectively merging the move log and the new pages log would greatly reduce the utility of the latter, just by clogging it up.
Marked WONTFIX. I agree with Simetrical -- this seems to be a misinterpretation of what Special:Newpages is.
