Wikipedia talk:Teahouse#Bot inviting already-indeffed vandalism only accounts.3F

Just a quick observation to those editing the introductory template: Might it not be worth mentioning the ability to directly contact a Mentor with their question? Nick Moyes (talk) 23:14, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

:{{ping|Nick Moyes}} I [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1287503716 added] a bit to that template about the Mentors. Thoughts? ‍Relativity ⚡️ 17:54, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

::Update: I [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1287504879 reworded] my original edit slightly, because I thought new editors might not know what a "mentor" is on Wikipedia. ‍Relativity ⚡️ 18:03, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I've written a new essay, WP:Terms of art on Wikipedia, which may be helpful when new editors are confused by words like "notable" which have specific meanings on WP that differ from the general meaning. Improvements are welcome. Sunrise (talk) 07:42, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I have two ideas for the Teahouse:

1. For the "Use this link to ask for help" link, mw:Help:DiscussionTools#Preloading message content says you can use dtpreload=1. If that can be used signatures will be applied automatically so the preload text could be simplified, plus users get the live preview. The link uses {{tl|edit}} which doesn't seem to accept dtpreload, but is it technically possible and desirable?
2. Would Wikipedia:Pending changes be suitable for times when the Teahouse is semi-protected?

Commander Keane (talk) 06:44, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

:Unfamiliar with the preloading message content solution, but pending changes was discussed at AN in November{{snd}}there seem to have been mixed feelings about it at the time. Perfect4th (talk) 16:50, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Probably a screen width / float clearing issue of some sort. For me (using Vector 2010), the "this section is pinned" box whose code is in the intro message is actually appearing below the ToC on the right, currently inside the "How to seek Visual and Source editor experts" section -- which is misleading.

I tried adding the {{tlg|clear}} template to the bottom of the "Assistance for new editors unable to post here" section, but due to the length of the ToC that created other display issues, so I didn't save it. Maybe someone with more experience with wiki layout issues could fix it? -- Avocado (talk) 16:37, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Why is this page in :Category:Pages that should not be manually archived? Neither WP:Help desk and WP:COIN, for example, are.

Unless there is a good reason, I propose to remove the category. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:12, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:The Teahouse is already periodically archived by Lowercase sigmabotIII, so it sounds like it's in an appropriate category. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:51, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::As are the examples I gave, and many others that are not in the category. Indeed, the category only has 28 members (21 of which are Teahouse and its sub-pages); bot archiving is used on tens or hundreds of thousands of pages. The two methods are not mutually exclusive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:03, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Removed from the Wikipedia:Teahouse/Header pseudo-template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:@Pigsonthewing, my guess is that it may have something to do with the talk page messages that are (or at one point were?) sent to editors when their thread gets archived. I'd double check that manual archiving doesn't interfere with that or some other process. It'd also be good to find the edit that added to see if there's a summary/ping the editor. There are potential WP:FENCE concerns. Sdkb ^talk 15:03, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

::Added by User:Ammarpad in 2019 with the edit summary "replace with the newer header to migrate the code here", in {{diff|Wikipedia:Teahouse/Header|prev|892554462|this diff}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:59, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Sounds like it was probably originally added somewhere else? Sdkb ^talk 21:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Yes the page was in the category already. That edit just moved the header code {{diff|Wikipedia:Teahouse/Header|prev|892554741|from the page source text}} to /Header subpage template to reduce the bloat.

::::As far as I can see, the category was originally added to the page (via template) in 2014 {{diff|Template:TH question page|prev|636538199|in this edit}}, before the code later ended up in the page directly and then re-templated again in 2019. – Ammarpad (talk) 17:10, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

:::::OK, so there's no explanation there and the editor is now blocked, so I think we've done our due diligence to the extent possible. If removing it causes any explosions, I guess we'll find out. Sdkb ^talk 19:08, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

::Just as an FYI on {{tq|talk page messages that are (or at one point were?) sent to editors when their thread gets archived}}—I did check one of the messages {{u|Pigsonthewing}} manually archived and didn't see {{botlinks|KiranBOT}} (actual BRFA) leave a message for that thread on OP's user talk, so not conclusive, just a casual comment. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 17:18, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

:{{re|Pigsonthewing}} Hello. Yes, {{u|Sdkb}} is correct. Similar to {{u|Rotideypoc41352}}'s doubt, KiranBOT doesnt fully depend on archival by Lowercase sigmabot III, but KiranBOT does rely on the edit summary, especially the number of discussions mentioned in edit summary by sigmabot III. —usernamekiran (talk) 04:06, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

::Thanks for the clarification. In the unlikely event anyone's wondering, I didn't say anything when I noticed [that manually archived posts do not result in user talk posts] because the original bot's doc at User:Muninnbot/doc#General principles of bot design says, {{tq|it was decided very early on that when it comes to determining notifications, a false positive is much more problematic than a false negative...it is acceptable to miss some notifications}} (wikilink original). While the two bots use different logic (per KiranBOT's BRFA), Munninbot also relied on lowercase sigmabot III: {{tq|Then, it pulls the latest archival edit by lowercase sigmabot III and looks at which sections were removed from the page by this edit}} (wikilink original). Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:04, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

What's up with the semi-protection on Wikipedia Teahouse?

Is this going to be unprotected soon? How would this affect newcomers who joined Wikipedia to contribute? 205.155.225.249 (talk) 20:20, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:The Teahouse is semi-protected because of persistent vandalism from an LTA user. If the main page is semi-protected, newcomers can come here to ask questions; in the event that this page is protected, they are encouraged to the {{tl|help me}} template or the link in the large message box at the top here. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:28, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:Please see the notice posted to the top of this page. Due to ongoing, persistent disruption by a VPN-using IP hopper engaging in personalized, virulent harassment of another editor, we’ve had to protect a range of pages. IP and other non-autoconfirmed editors can still edit most of the encyclopedia and seek guidance via the method described in the notice. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:29, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::You can get a sense of how pervasive and disruptive this has all been by taking a look at this page’s editing history. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:42, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:::THank you. It is sad that it has come to this... SmartScience (talk) 01:18, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

A long time ago, it was standard practice to greet helpees at the Teahouse with a {{tl|u}} or other notification template as a way to instigate a notification to them that their question had a response. Has some other functionality made this unnecessary? I see a lot of responses without such templates. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 03:11, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

:{{u|jmcgnh}}: Teahouse hosts are encouraged to use notification templates, but some of us sometimes forget. Maproom (talk) 06:57, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

::Topic subscriptions make it less necessary than it used to be, but it's still best practice to ping, I'd say, if only since then it'll generate a red alert rather than a blue notification. Sdkb ^talk 18:35, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

:::I've always pinged the OP everytime when answering and nobody said anything, so I like pinging. Tarlby ^{(t) (c)} 18:37, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

:@Jmcgnh The reply tool available now, which I nearly always use, makes it much easier than it used to be to ping the OP, so there's no point really in also placing a notification on their Talk Page. Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:10, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

The page Wikipedia:Teahouse/Suggestions currently links [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Wikipedia%3ATeahouse%2FSuggestions%2FSuggestBot+User+input&editintro=Wikipedia%3ATeahouse%2FSuggestions%2FSuggestions+preload&preloadtitle=%7B%7Bsubst%3AREVISIONUSER%7D%7D%2C+your+editing+suggestions+are+on+the+way§ion=new&title=Special%3AMyTalk here] to sign up for suggestions. I propose substituting a link for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Form_assistant/Run?withJS=MediaWiki%3AForm-assistant.js#TeahouseSuggestions here], which provides the same functionality but looks nicer and is powered by the new form-assistant tool. (Pinging SuggestBot operator {{U| Nettrom}} in case they have any thoughts!) Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:05, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

:The new form looks much nicer. So long as it doesn't break anything, switching sounds good to me! Sdkb ^talk 19:20, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if anyone cares, but I feel like the list of Featured hosts (the rotating pictures in the Teahouse header) is outdated. The last addition to the list was all the way back in 2021, and before then would be 2019. I checked the most active editors in the last 50,000 revisions [https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Teahouse?editorlimit=200] and found that mostly all of the users on the lower half of the list, unfortunately, don't edit the Teahouse anymore/that much. I think we might be due for an update here. Thoughts? Tarlby ^{(t) (c)} 19:08, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

: I like the idea; I do agree that the updated top 30 list is pretty representative the hosts I see most often, while the current one has a lot of inactive users. GoldRomean (talk) 21:32, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

::See WT:Teahouse/Archive 27#Teahouse Hosts! for some background. User:Nick Moyes knows most about the history of that list and still updates it, I think. Mike Turnbull (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Over the last few months (possibly longer?) we have seen a few relatively inexperienced editors enthusiastically jumping into answering questions. These new helpers themselves may have only been registered for a few weeks and may not even be extended confirmed. They try to answer many questions but their answers are often incomplete, misleading, or downright contradict our PAGs. There's often also some basic difficulty in writing coherent English to the point where it can be difficult to extract any meaning from the answer. I eventually go to one of these users' talk pages to find that others have already raised these issues, and are often met with defensiveness or hostility; sometimes these users end up being blocked for CIR or other reasons.

I don't want to bite newcomers, but these newcomers who don't know what they don't know can cost the rest of us a lot of time correcting their answers as well as cleaning up their other issues. Can we perhaps set some guidelines that might prevent new editors from getting in over their head? I'm wary of setting rigid minimum thresholds for account age or edit count, but am wondering if there's a gentle way to say something like, "If you have been here less than X months or have made fewer than Y edits, you may not have enough experience to help other new editors yet." ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 04:05, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

:Wikipedia:Teahouse/Host start has a few such expectations, if that's similar to what you had in mind? Maybe we could make those suggestions more visible to inexperienced editors in some way. Perfect4th (talk) 02:37, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

::Perfect4th: Oh, I remember signing that form way back when! It seems that the "host" procedure has become a lot less formal these days and we're not saying someone has to be a capital-H Host to answer questions – but those are a good set of baseline expectations. I do think we might need to be more direct about the need to communicate in clear English, as that seems to be an issue for some of our newer helpers. — ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 07:45, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

:::{{u|ClaudineChionh}}, I think that's a good request to make of helpers. I'd be interested to hear {{u|Nick Moyes}}' thoughts on this as well as I know he's been active before in the backrooms of the Teahouse. Were you envisioning codifying best practice into that page and asking helpers to abide by that, or putting it on a separate page, or just bringing those up in individual talk page conversations? Perfect4th (talk) 18:32, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

::::@Perfect4th Thanks for the 'ping'. Apologies to both of you: I'm afraid real life has intervened for me in recent months (but in a positive way), so I've not been very active or seen the types (or indeed number) of recent problem Teahouse responses being alluded to above.

::::

::::In previous discussions about how we accept qualified Hosts (with a capital H), I think I've always said that I'm happy to quietly remove any user who has signed themselves up via the Host landing page, yet clearly doesn't show competence or politeness when answering questions. I usually try to go back through the newly-added Hosts list and send each of them a retrospective welcome message, which includes the reminder that we may remove inactive hosts. That is basically to let us clear out people who have signed up per WP:HAT, yet have never actually contributed anything here! I'm afraid I've not done that clearout for some time, but will try to do so over the next few months when I'm free again.

::::Obviously, very poor answers from one new user serve only to confuse other new users. If it's a WP:CIR issue, then we can have a gentle word, or eventually even block a user from editing the Teahouse page if their answers continue to cause real issues for others. But we should remember that most new users will be trying to contribute in a positive manner and to help others - and that's a good thing for the health of this Project. With its informal, self-signup approach, The Teahouse can serve as a 'way in' for many users to the 'backroom' side of editing Wikipedia, and we should really welcome and encourage that. Many relatively inexperienced hosts have gone on to great things here, and I would not want to put them off by acting too harshly or too swiftly right at the start of their 'Wikipedia adventure'.

::::

::::Personally, I think the Host Expectations list is quite reasonable - maybe even a little too harsh in stating they need to have been here for 30 daya and have 500 mainspace edits. That only went in a few years back precisely because of a similar issue of one or two enthusiastic youngsters who were keen to help out, but were unfortunaetly causing more problems than they were resolving. It simply give us a little more leeway to remove Hosts from the list who were not experienced enough at that time. But we don't stop anyone from answering a Teahouse question if they are able to do so constructively. Indeed, that was how I started here ages ago, when Cullen thanked me for something I'd explained and encouraged me to help out more.

::::I'm sure we'd all be happy to consider specific suggestions for a wording or design change to the sign-up process if anyone would care to come up with a proposal. But retaining the informality and self-censoring approach is, I believe, very important. All other issues with non-Hosts ought to be dealable with on an individual basis. If a new user responds rudely to someone who politely asks them to step back for one reason or another, it tends to indicate to me they aren't quite cut out for the politeness required of Teahouse Hosts. If all else fails, alerting one of our Hosts who are also Admins to these issue could be one way of dealing with any such problems.

::::I hope this rambling reply is of some use to this discussion, and thanks to @ClaudineChionh for raising the matter. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:54, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::{{re|Nick Moyes}} Thanks for the background. Now I vaguely remember that when I first returned to Wikipedia in 2020/2021 and discovered the Teahouse, I did fill in the Host questionnaire and was added to the list, and must have been taken off at some point during my more recent extended wikibreak. When I returned again last year I just dove back in to (carefully) answering questions without thinking too much about the Host list. And I suspect many new helpers are also skipping that process.

:::::I'm in favour of what seems to have become a de facto understanding that Anyone can help at the Teahouse, but like Anyone can edit, this isn't entirely true. In my mind I'd like to see the Teahouse as one way that promising new-ish editors can start to get some experience in Wikipedia's "backrooms" or discussion pages. I could probably think of at least half a dozen whom I first noticed here just over the last year and who have become valuable contributors in AfC, NPP, or anti-vandalism work. However, what I've been seeing in the current Dunning–Kruger outbreak seems to be new editors being helped at the Teahouse and, after a short period, thinking they have enough experience to help others. I don't know why this often escalates to outright hostility and abuse when experienced editors raise these issues on their user talk pages. Do you (or other long-term hosts) recall seeing this hostility in earlier years or is it a new phenomenon?

:::::I think what I'm grasping for is a twofold solution to: 1) very new editors being led astray by incorrect answers from relatively new helpers, and 2) gentle guidance on answering questions (and maybe on honest self-assessment) so that these new helpers don't get themselves into avoidable trouble. Unfortunately I can't put myself in the shoes of someone who's been editing for two weeks and decides that they know enough to help other newbies. Would other Hosts/old-timers see value in formalising the Host application and listing process? Or sidestepping that, and adding a bit of guidance on answering questions to the banner at the top of the Teahouse?

:::::Pinging {{u|Cullen328}} – no obligation to answer as I know you have a lot going on, just flagging this discussion as you've often been the admin I've seen dealing with these enthusiastic new helpers. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 02:25, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::Thanks for the ping, {{u|ClaudineChionh}}. I do not consider the formal sign up process for Teahouse hosts to be all that important. But I place a very high priority on a reasonable level of accuracy in answers and language proficiency. We all make mistakes but some "hosts" make egregious mistakes and write poor quality confusing and ambiguous English prose in their answers over and over, and then seem to resent more experienced editors pointing out the problems. I will warn these people and block them if necessary. In my view, it is unacceptable to have people pretending expertise that they do not have, or guessing at answers. Cullen328 (talk) 02:53, 21 June 2025 (UTC)