[qingcharles]

WTF. 4 month review backlog? Why is there even a review system at all? This isn't a legal journal, this is Wikipedia. Your article looks great. Playwright is a very notable piece of software, extensively used.

I hate when things get mature and enshittify.

[swalling]

It really sucks, but the reason why review happened is because there is an onslaught of people who show up to write promotional articles, many of them paid by PR agencies and reputation management firms.

The previous system of doing post-publish review of new articles had an even worse backlog because it let a huge volume of shit into the front door.

The root cause of this is Wikipedia’s huge influence in Google SEO and knowledge graph. As the open web is dying, it’s one of the few reliable ways to dump information straight to the top of Google SERPs. When I write new Wikipedia articles it is often indexed to the first page of results in minutes.

[denton-scratch]

> Why is there even a review system at all?

I don't create articles these days; it's too much like hard work.

You used to be able to create an article by making a redlink wikilink somewhere, and then clicking it - that would take you to an editor. The new article would appear in mainspace. Do you have to "volunteer" to appear in mainspace? Are all new articles deemed to be "draft", and subject to review nowadays? Or are some users allowed to create new articles in mainspace, and others not? If so, what are the criteria?

[mmiyer]

The criteria for creating an article in mainspace is to have made 10 edits and have an account more than 4 days old.

[denton-scratch]

Thanks! That's a pretty low threshold to surmount. @lucgagan: you've done the time. Try editing a few articles - copyediting is enough. Then delete your draft, and create a new mainspace article.

[qingcharles]

OK, panic over. Nothing to see here. I wondered why I had never seen this feature in any of my article creations.

[gbear605]

It still works like it used to, there’s just a requirement of having made ten edits first before you’re allowed to. That’s a fairly low bar, and it gets rid of a ton of spam that used to be created.