- Reviewing pending changes is not a quality assurance activity, other than in the crudest possible sense. If the change is blatant vandalism, grossly derogatory, clearly falls four of the BLP policy, or otherwise is on a similar level of no-no, reject it; otherwise accept it. It's not my job as a reviewer to make judgement calls or to try to be a guardian of editing standards. After all, if the page weren't protected, that change would have gone through without as much as by-your-leave. And that's fine (or so I'm told).
- Alternatives to deletion include draftifying. Alternatives to draftifying include deletion. Which is great for the black-and-white stuff, not always so helpful for the vast areas of grey in the middle. And either way, someone is likely to take issue with whichever way you jump.
- Nothing in and of itself guarantees notability, or lack of it; only presumption one way or the other. I sort of understand that, but often forget it. (It seems many others do, too.) Oh, and WP notability and 'real life' notability aren't the same thing at all, but that's just p.1 stuff.
- If someone isn't taking any notice of, or responding to, talk page messages and the like, it's not necessarily that they are being obstinate or malevolent; they could be editing on a mobile device and WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. Which really sucks, to put it mildly. (Note to self: check if the user has edited their talk page; if they have, then this point probably doesn't apply.)
- It seems many new editors interpret the site's tagline
"free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" as meaning that anyone can freely write whatever they want.
- Having hit the 'random article' link more times than I care to admit, I've discovered that a surprisingly large chunk of the English-language Wikipedia is made up of articles on:
- Insects and other creepy crawlies
- TV series, and individual seasons and episodes thereof
- Iranian (not exclusively, but especially, for some weird reason) villages
- Translating articles from other wikis, or even just using them as sources, can be tricky, because the English-language one seems to have stricter requirements for referencing and notability... and, as luck would have it, sources quoted in the other-than-English wiki articles are all too often expired links or offline publications. Dang.
- There's a direct correlation between the maturity of one's career, and the likelihood of one having done or achieved something notable or noteworthy (some exceptions like Shirley Temple notwithstanding). There's also an apparent inverse relationship between the maturity of one's career, and one's eagerness to have one's career described in a Wikipedia article. Which largely explains the seemingly never-ending stream of new vanity/promo articles cropping up constantly, on people (as well as organisations, products, etc.) who really want to have an article, but really do not warrant one. Often these articles are created, overtly or covertly, by the subject themselves, or by someone closely associated with them, and very often the creating editor is a new account with the required 10 edits (deleting empty spaces, changing punctuation, etc.) before — WHAM! — out comes the promo piece.
- For this reason, and this alone, I think the WP:AUTOCONFIRM threshold for new articles on a few specific subjects — namely: living people, companies and products (incl. musical recordings) — should be raised from 10 edits & 4 days to, say, 50 & 20, as this could cut down the curation and deletion workload.
- You shouldn't unnecessarily invoke ref tags on talk pages.
- BLPs don't need to have every statement supported, only the potentially contentious ones. (And what does 'contentious' mean, or better yet 'contentious positive'? WhoTF knows!)
- Reviewing drafts at AfC is a thankless task: you review ten, and when you're done, the number of pending drafts has actually gone up. And the next thing you know, someone is on your talk page complaining about one of your reviews.
- But if AfC is thankless, NPP is thankless and exhausting! At AfC you only need to find one reason to decline (not that that's the aim, but that's how it often goes), but at NPP you have to be sure there are no major problems... and decide what to do about it, if you do find some. And whatever you then do, the next thing you know, someone is on your talk page complaining about it. Hey ho hum.
- If you find a significant content match in a new draft or article, it's likely to be a copyvio. If you find one in an old one (a few years or more), it's likely that the source has copied from Wikipedia, directly or indirectly. (Meaning, don't bother reporting them, they invariably aren't actioned.)
- Notes to self:
- NEVER try for the mop. (Forgotten why not? Check out any RfA for the ****-slinging that involves.)
- Try very hard to resist AfD'ing US or UK secondary schools, there'll always be someone arguing that either their particular school or secondary schools in general are somehow inherently notable. (Which they're not, but try telling them that!)
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