Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions

Requirement AP: nearly perfect

The admin instructions for autopatrolled now say that a sample of articles need to be "nearly perfect", including details like the MOS. Is that too high a bar? I suggest we change this to "of high quality" instead. I don't think NPP checks for these more minor issues anyway.

I'm now declining if I see more than one uncited sentence across my sample of articles, but not for category or MOS issues, even though I do note them when I decline for issues with clop or citations. I believe that's in line with how others assess requests? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:45, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Declining for an uncited sentence sounds a bit strict. Maybe uncited paragraph might be a good bar? –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:51, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

One uncited sentence I let slide, but if I see some uncited text in more than one article, I do decline now. This might still be too strict of course. The admin instructions do set a very high bar, which I don't think makes that much sense. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Isn't it pretty normal to put citations at the end of a paragraph though? My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that even at FA you don't need a reference at the end of every sentence. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:06, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes, when I say uncited, I mean fully uncited. For instance, a final sentence in a paragraphs, where the citation before that sentence does not cover the fact. It's permitted iirc, but discouraged, to put a citation "in the wrong spot", so you could have a fully cited paragraph, with the citation in the penultimate sentence. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Honestly this is why I don't work on autopatrolled requests. I end up feeling like such a stickler and like very few are perfect enough in what they do, but the instructions do say to look for near perfection. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Apparently, the requirement of 'nearly perfect' articles was added quite recently [1]. Novem, do you remember if you added this after a discussion? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't recall exactly, but I probably added it after seeing the standards that WP:PERM/AP admins were using at that time. I remember autopatrol requests getting declined for things like not adding DEFAULTSORT. So I think my motivation was to align the instructions with current practice. I don't mind if you want to revert. From a high level perspective, I'd actually like to see autopatrol given out more easily, to help with the NPP backlog. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:04, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I would like for us to check only core policies, as the NPP team doesn't check for formatting nitpicks anyway. There is diversity in how admins respond to requests, and many do not decline on these metrics. The decline reasons are simply more visible. Will revert when at computer tomorrow. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:16, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree that we should generally adjust expectations for Autopatrolled downwards. Ultimately this user right's purpose is to control the queue of articles reviewed through NPP, and it should be serving that purpose, rather than anything else. As such, I think the bar for AP should be thought of as "Given the minimum standard we expect of an article to be marked as reviewed without significant numbers of tags also being added or modifications being made, does this user regularly create articles that meet or exceed that standard?" It shouldn't require any more than that to be an effective filter for the NPP queue, and I think the current standards are definitely way beyond this. Sam Walton (talk) 00:02, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I've removed the sentence on formatting needing to be 'nearly perfect'. One other criterion I'm not certain about is "regularly create articles". I feel this is sometimes used to justify declining requests where we're got a slow steady pace of creation over a long period of time. This adds just as much to the NPP queue on average as somebody making articles over a shorter period of time, but flaming out after a year. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:09, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

• I've been one of the most active admins at WP:PERM/A for several years and this is the first time I've seen Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled/Administrator instructions. It looks like it was split from Wikipedia:Autopatrolled in 2015 and, apart from one batch of edits by NL in 2023, not touched since. I can't find any discussions supporting the original text or NL's 2023 changes (which don't match my understanding of our standards at PERM either now or then). It doesn't appear to be linked from Wikipedia:Autopatrolled and the link from WP:PERM/A is hidden in the header. I would therefore suggest that it's a redundant fork that doesn't reflect current consensus/practices (if it ever did) and that we should probably just delete it. I have always worked from Wikipedia:Autopatrolled#Guidelines_for_granting, which has been kept up-to-date and just says "valid" not "perfect". (As for what that means, see this recent discussion. – Joe (talk) 12:25, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

  You can MFD that page if you want. I don't feel strongly about it or the changes I made. Was just trying to clean it up. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

  The main difference between the two versions still is the "regularly create articles", which I think is not a good metric to decline people for, per above. I'm therefore happy for it to be blarred or deleted. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks both. I've BLAR'd it to Wikipedia:Autopatrolled#Guidelines for granting. – Joe (talk) 08:08, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

EC-protection of PERM/NPR

Regarding [2], @Daniel Case: WP:NPPCRITERIA does include an EC-ish requirement but it also says administrators may grant the permission to editors who do not meet the strict criteria but that they otherwise deem to be competent. Requests by non-EC users are not very common but still permitted and I don't recall ever seeing any disruption from non-EC edits to WP:PERM/NPR, so protection seems unnecessary. – Joe (talk) 15:32, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @GoldRomean: since they had requested it. Daniel Case (talk) 16:27, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, the requests for AfC are extended protected. Also I think it's very unlikely that an admin will grant a non-ec request, and I see a lot of them being declined for simply the reason "does not meet min reqs". If one was truly serious about NPP, staying a bit until they do reach EC shouldn't be that hard. Ultimately I'll respect whatever ya'll (as the actual admins dealing with the requests) decide. Cheers, GoldRomean (talk) 17:02, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't mind the protection. I don't think we grant exceptions often enough to justify the extra effort and sting of declining all the other requests. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

"Unlikely" is not impossible and protection should be reserved for clear-cut cases of disruption. As I said, there has been no disruption from non-EC users editing WP:PERM/NPR. It rarely comes up and when it does it is not burdensome or stinging to occasionally write "sorry you're not eligible yet". What is the point of explicitly saying that exceptions are allowed in WP:NPRCRITERIA if we prevent people from asking for an exception at the software level?

Also Daniel, with all due respect to GoldRomean, it might have been a good idea to check with someone who is actually involved with NPP or PERM before fulfilling this request? – Joe (talk) 07:49, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Joe Roe has reverted the protection. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:28, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Adding checkuser-temporary-account to rollbackers and NPP folks

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Adding checkuser-temporary-account to rollbackers and NPP folks. Sohom (talk) 17:39, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

RfC on new temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right

There is an RfC on the new temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Temporary account IP-viewer. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:03, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

"This access is only required for editing highly contentious pages"

WP:PERM/EC says "This access is only required for editing highly contentious pages...". This is false. I just had someone ask if it is possible to get EC early to use the content translation tool. May I update the text on the page?

Technically, there are other, more niche uses, like voting in RfAs and AELECT, but as I am certain that someone asking for EC solely for that purpose will be denied it's not worth mentioning. The content translation tool, on the other hand, does not seem as clear-cut. Toadspike [Talk] 16:23, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

I have edited the text to mention WP:CXT. Toadspike [Talk] 19:28, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Looks good. I've tweaked things further. Schwede66 01:40, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

I reverted before seeing this discussion (sorry!), but I do disagree with adding this to the box. I don't think I've ever seen this granted early for content translation tool purposes, and since EC isn't required to use the content translation tool except in mainspace, we decline granting and direct them to target draft space with the tool and go through AFC instead. Adding content translation to the box here IMHO gives false hope as to someone's chances for getting EC early. stwalkerster (talk) 10:32, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

That's a reasonable explanation. I didn't know you could have the tool publish to draftspace. I would still remove the word "only" from the bit I quoted, though, since the statement as written is categorically false. Toadspike [Talk] 12:52, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Oops, I misunderstood: you only reverted the second edit. I think the current version is good. Toadspike [Talk] 12:59, 1 August 2025 (UTC)