UESPWiki:Patrollers

Patrollers are a subset of editors who regularly monitor the Recent Changes page to ensure that new edits meet the site's style guidelines.  To help them work together on this task, patrollers are provided with a couple of special tools.

Although patrollers may be the editors who most actively monitor recent changes, all members of the community are welcome to participate.  All editors, including first-time visitors to the site, are invited to help maintain the wiki's quality standards.  If you notice a typo or broken link, please help us by editing the page and fixing it.  If you notice vandalism, please undo the edit and add a warning to the editor's talk page,  .  The main tasks done by patrollers are available to all UESP editors; patrollers just have access to a couple of shortcuts.

Criteria for "Patrolled" Edits
See Patrolling Guidelines.

Patroller Tools
The most integral part of patrolling are red exclamation points that are shown on the Recent Changes page and the patroller's watchlist, indicating that the associated edit has not yet been approved.  These red exclamation points are only visible to patrollers, and their presence (or absence) has no general effect upon the page.  If any patroller marks an edit as "patrolled", the exclamation point disappears for all patrollers.

All patrollers' edits are always marked as patrolled.  A small group of editors, known as autopatrolled users, will also have their edits automatically marked as patrolled, but cannot mark edits patrolled themselves.  All other new edits are automatically given a red exclamation point.  There are only a few ways to pull up the option to mark the edit as patrolled:
From the Recent Changes page or your Watchlist page, click the "(diff)" link next to an edit.  On the page that comes up there will be a link: "[Mark as patrolled]".  Click this link to patrol the edit.  This can also be done with the "compare selected revisions" button that appears on a page's history.
For new pages, there is no "(diff)" link; instead, just click on the page name.  In this case, "[Mark as patrolled]" shows up in the bottom right corner of the page.
Use the Patrol special page, described below.
When a series of edits are made to a page, each one must be marked separately; simply marking the last edit will not clear all the previous edits.  Also, editing the page yourself does not clear any previous unpatrolled edits.


The one special tool made available to patrollers is the Patrol special page, described at Mediawiki.  When a patroller pulls up this page it will select an edit that needs to be reviewed.  Only one patroller will be shown a given edit at a time, which will limit the possibility that two patrollers will try to fix the same page at the same time. In the case of edits that should be undone, it provides a simple one-step interface to reverse the edit and mark it as patrolled.  The reason for the reversal that will appear in the edit summary can be selected from a list of standard messages, or a custom message can be entered.

Edit Interface
In addition patrollers can edit the interface pages in the MediaWiki namespace. Commonly used pages include:
Common.css - The style sheet that determines the overall appearance of all Wiki pages
Common.js - The javascript that is used by all Wiki articles
Sidebar - The list of links shown on the left-hand side of all Wiki pages
Tagline - The text under the title of all Wiki pages that currently reads "The UESPWiki - Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995"

Becoming a Patroller
Nominations for patrollers are conducted on the Nominations subpage. There is nothing wrong with self nominations.

Nomination Guidelines
The community looks for certain qualifications when selecting patrollers, and certain things are cause for immediate disqualification.

Suggested Qualifications
Active on the wiki—The community needs to know that the wiki will benefit from your actions after becoming a patroller, so it is recommended that a candidate have a period of roughly three months of weekly activity before being nominated, or a longer period of at least six months of more sporadic activity.
Use of proper spelling and grammar—Patrollers check other people's edits for spelling and grammar mistakes, so a candidate's edits should demonstrate this trait.
Use of proper style—Patrollers must be able to follow the wiki's preferred style. Additions should be as legible as possible, so patrollers will often need to rephrase poorly written edits or reformat additions to talk pages or articles.
Monitor Recent Changes—Patrollers watch the Recent Changes page. Doing so before becoming a patroller is advisable to get a feel for the job.
E-mail contact available—There are certain occasions when it might be more appropriate for a patroller to be contacted off-site.  A working " " function on the wiki ensures this is possible.
In the same vein it is advisable to be accustomed with the site's real-time chat options (Discord), though there is no need to be a regular user of these functions.

Immediate Disqualifications
Fewer than 250 edits in content space—A minimum of 250 edits in the template and/or content namespaces will allow the nominee's knowledge of many different aspects of wiki markup to be judged. For the purposes of the nomination, content is defined as the gamespaces (e.g., Skyrim), their corresponding modspaces (e.g., Skyrim Mod), Books, and Lore, however, all talk pages are excluded from the count. A breakdown of edits by namespace can be found by entering a username here.
Less than one month on the wiki—At least one month of editing is deemed necessary to have adequately learned the policies, procedures, and guidelines used on the wiki. In the event of a new game release, there will be a two month requirement for any new accounts registered between one month before the game's release and three months afterward.
Recent nomination—If a user has been nominated with his or her consent and that nomination was either rejected or withdrawn, that nominee will not be eligible for another nomination for three months from the date of the rejection or a withdrawal if votes have been cast. This exclusion does not include nominations rejected due to any of the other immediate disqualifications.
Recent warning—If a user has received a legitimate warning, he or she will not be eligible to be nominated for one month from the date of the warning.
Recent block—If a user was legitimately blocked from editing the wiki, he or she will not be eligible to be nominated for six months from the expiration of the block. Similarly, a patroller who is blocked from editing the wiki will also lose patroller rights, and may not be renominated for six months from the expiration of the block.
Recent resignation—If a user has had his or her patroller rights removed at his or her own request, that user will not be eligible to be nominated again for three months from the date of the removal of rights.

Current Patrollers
All administrators automatically have patroller privileges.  In addition, the following editors are patrollers (an automatically-generated list is available from ListUsers):

Active Patrollers
Alarra
Alfwyn
Contraptions
Dcsg
FioFioFio
Kiz
Likelolwhat
OriwaK
Rook
Tib

Semi-Active Patrollers
SarthesArai
Talyyn
The Rim of the Sky
Thuraya Salaris
Xyzzy

Inactive Patrollers
The following editors are patrollers who are not currently active on the wiki:


Userbox
After being successfully nominated to become a patroller, you can place the patroller userbox on your user page:
 
 

See Also
User Group Rights – A listing of all the user groups for the site, including other administrative roles.
Autopatrolled Users
Userspace Patrollers
Wikimedia help on recent changes
Mediawiki help on patrolled edits