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Article Alerts

An automated article monitoring system for WikiProjects

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By Headbomb

Increasing participation in Wikipedia's various reviewing processes, such as peer reviews, Good article nominations, and Articles for deletion, has always been a concern for the Wikipedia community. This is especially true when it comes to processes such as Proposed deletions, where low-traffic articles can be deleted simply because no one is aware that they have been proposed. Valuable time is spent monitoring process pages, when it could instead be spent on improving and reviewing articles. This situation inspired three editors, Headbomb, B. Wolterding, and Legoktm, to develop a tool designed to increase awareness of what is going on in the various reviewing processes of Wikipedia: Article Alerts.

Article Alerts is a fully automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles tagged by their banner enter a workflow such as Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, and Peer review (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report is given at the end of this article (from WikiProject Physics).

The alert system was originally suggested in mid-July 2008[1] and ArticleAlertbot was subsequently coded by B. Wolterding.[2] Since the bot runs on the tool server, and that B. Wolterding did not wish to disclose personal information required to operate a bot on the tool server,[3] Legoktm volunteered himself to be the bot operator.[4] The bot has been fully-operational since late-October 2008.[5] At the time of writing, about 65 WikiProjects and Taskforces, out of more than a thousand,[note 1] were subscribed to Article Alerts (list of current subscribers), generating very positive feedback.[6][7] Although the original idea was to help WikiProjects keep track of their articles in the wikijungle,[1] it will be interesting to see if this tool increases the participation in the various reviewing processes.[note 2]

It is the hope of the maintainers of Article Alerts that all active WikiProjects be subscribed to Article Alerts by the end of 2009.[note 3] Those interested in setting up Article Alerts for their WikiProject or Taskforce can visit Wikipedia:Article alerts#Subscribing for instructions.

Article alerts for WikiProject Physics

Today's featured articles

Articles for deletion

Proposed deletions

Categories for discussion

Good article nominees

Featured article reviews

Good article reassessments

Requested moves

Articles to be merged

(5 more...)

Articles to be split

Articles for creation

(61 more...)

Notes

  1. ^ About 1,500 Projects and Taskforces are listed at the W.P 1.0 Editorial Team Index, but not all of them are active.
  2. ^ See the 16 February 2009 article by Dr pda for a report on the participation levels of reviewing processes such as Featured and Good article nominations and peer review.
  3. ^ First expressed here by the author of this Signpost article.

References

  1. ^ a b Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 22#Bot for WikiProject News (WPNBot?)
  2. ^ Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ArticleAlertbot
  3. ^ Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Archive 1#finding "who nominated" (bottom of section)
  4. ^ User talk:Legoktm/September 2008#Alert bot
  5. ^ Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Archive 1#Open for subscriptions
  6. ^ "I recently discovered this service, and fell in love with it immediately." – G.A.S
  7. ^ "Wow!!!!!!!!!!!! That looks great." – TonyTheTiger, about the Article Alerts for WikiProject Chicago


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==Comment by Ottawahitech==

I know this page is ancient, but I am hoping some still visit it because this information is priceless in my opinion. Ottawahitech (talk) 01:09, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Setting up alerts for a task-force

I would like to set up alerts for WikiProject Ottawa which I think is a task-force of wikiProject Canada, Can anyone advise me how to do it? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 01:11, 20 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me[reply]

See Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing. If you need help, ask at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:16, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

article alert on holiday?

I know many volunteers are too busy this time of year to contriibute, but is ArticleAlertbot also on holiday? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 19:40, 24 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me[reply]

Can ArticleAlertbot be run more than once a day?

Just wondering if ArticleAlertbot can run more often than at 9UTC once a day because many articles in the various deletion queues are not tagged with relevant wikiproject banners. Once someone tags the talk-page it takes up to 24 hours before the article shows up in article alerts for the wikiprojcect AND many projects still do not have article alerts set up properly which may delay things even further. Most XfDs run for only 7 days, so prompt alerts are vitally important. Ottawahitech (talk)please ping me
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