Commons:Patrol

This page is considered an official guideline on Wikimedia Commons.

It illustrates standards or behaviors which most editors agree with in principle and generally follow. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

This page in a nutshell:

Marking an edit as patrolled is the act of verifying that an edit conforms with Commons guidelines.
Unpatrolled newly created pages are highlighted in yellow while unpatrolled edits are indicated by an exclamation mark.
Users who aren't patrollers don't see the indications.

The patrol user right is a specific user right that enables a user to mark edits, file uploads and page creations as patrolled.^[1] This is in order to reduce the backlog of new pages, new files and unpatrolled edits. It exists to tell other patrollers something has been reviewed by a patroller, that it's not vandalism and doesn't fall outside our project scope (or that it has been reverted/deleted in such cases). Users with the patrol right will see a link like "[Mark as patrolled]" in the right bottom corner of any new page or new file, and on the right-hand side of any diff-view, that has not yet been patrolled. In addition, unpatrolled pages will be highlighted in yellow on Special:NewPages. Unpatrolled files at Special:NewFiles are not marked in any way, but can be filtered. Unpatrolled edits stand out by their ! exclamation mark in front of the line. Patrollers are supposed to check in order to see if they fall within our project scope. Acceptable pages or files should be patrolled, and non-acceptable pages or files should either be rearranged or deleted if this is not possible. The right is given by default to any administrator, but can be given to trustworthy users upon request. It's possible to either ask a specific administrator for the user right or to formally request the right at Commons:Requests for rights.

Special:NewPages as it displays for patrollers. Unpatrolled pages highlight in yellow, patrolled ones have no highlight.

For a list of patrollers, see Special:Listusers/patroller (currently 657).

How does NewPage-patrol work?

The arrow points to the "mark as patrolled" link on a newly created page

An unpatrolled edit in a recent changes view, with arrows indicating the steps to mark as patrolled

Any pages highlighted in yellow on Special:NewPages has not yet been marked as patrolled. This means that it may not have been reviewed. When you check the page, you should mark it as patrolled if (a) you see that it is a good page or (b) before or after you tag it for deletion. If you are not sure about what to do with a page, do not mark it as patrolled; another editor will review it later.

To mark a page as patrolled, simply click the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" link in the bottom right corner of the page.

What to mark as patrolled

Anything that is appropriate for Commons.
Problematic content, after it has been tagged for deletion.

What not to mark as patrolled

Pages you are not sure about and no one else supports keeping (other than the author/uploader).

How does edit patrol work?

From the Recent changes click the (diff)-link of any unpatrolled edit. Then in the diff-view review the edit by clicking the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" on the righthand side. After marking the edit as patrolled you can close the page, or (in the event of vandalism or otherwise contributions not in coherence with Commons guidelines) perform an undo or rollback.

In the diff-view one can tell whether or not a talk-page exists by the color of the link. Let the user know you reverted their edit by leaving a message. See also Commons:Counter Vandalism Unit#File.

How does file patrol work?

File uploads can be patrolled too, from the bottom of their description. This is still a new feature for which no specific guidelines have been developed yet.

Autopatrol

Shortcuts

The autopatrol user right is similar to the patrol right, in that it is a specific user right which involves marking an action as patrolled. The differences are:

that autopatrollers do not have the ability to actively mark actions as patrolled; instead, only their own actions are automatically marked as patrolled.
some gadgets allowing to make a great number of modifications are accessible to autopatrollers^[2] (for example: VisualFileChange).

This right is commonly granted to users who aren't necessarily involved in patrolling pages, edits or uploads, but who create a high level of quality pages or uploads that do not require patrolling by other users. This reduces the backlog of Newpage and Commons:Counter Vandalism Unit#Anonymous edits. This right is also granted to users who make a large amount of good edits that do not need to be patrolled, to reduce the clutter on Watchlists.

You may apply for autopatrol at Commons:Requests_for_rights#Autopatrol.

Users with the patrol user right should not be granted this right, as they already have it (it is redundant). Membership of the image-reviewer user group includes the patrol and autopatrol user rights.

For a list of autopatrolled users, see Special:Listusers/autopatrolled (currently 7,620). For a list of the rights of the autopatrolled user group, see Special:ListGroupRights#autopatrolled.

Other notes

A log of all patrols can be seen at Special:Log/patrol. It includes usernames, articles, and the revision reviewed, and may be sorted by username or by article title.
Pages created and modified by administrators, bots, and users with autopatrol right are automatically marked as "patrolled (automatic)".
There is a "Hide patrolled edits" option on Special:NewPages so that you can ignore pages that have already been reviewed.
Even when the last few hours or even days have all been patrolled, there is still a big backlog. Pages expire from the unpatrolled queue after 720 hours (30 days).
For those who patrol regularly there are a couple of gadgets available to assist (e.g. Popups and RTRC).
Users with the (auto)patrol right also gain the ability to batch-upload more files at once with Upload Wizard (mass-upload), are exempted from the abuse filter that prevents most users from uploading MP3 files on Commons and are able to move up to 32 pages per minute instead of 8.
Users with the autopatrol right also gain the technical ability to overwrite files uploaded by other accounts. However, they are expected to abide by COM:OVERWRITE when doing so, and repeated failure to comply with COM:OVERWRITE may result in revocation of the autopatrol right.

CSS classes

There are three CSS classes related to patrolled edits:

The class for non-patrolled articles in NewPages is .not-patrolled, so colorblind users or users who prefer a different style can, for example, add .not-patrolled { border: 2px solid black } to their user CSS files.
The class for the exclamation mark is .unpatrolled, for example .unpatrolled { display:none } hides them from the RecentChanges and your watchlist.
The class for the "Mark this page as patrolled" link in the lower-right corner of each new page is .patrollink, you can style it in your user CSS file, for example: .patrollink { font: bold small sans-serif}

Notes

↑ Wondering about patrol on other Wikimedia sites? Not all Wikimedia sites have the full RecentChanges Patrol system enabled. To check whether a given site has it, you can look at the 'wgUseRCPatrol' section in Wikimedia's settings file. The English Wikipedia, however, manages to be an exception to this (Phabricator:T21309), having an autopatrol user right (named 'autoreviewer') without a $wgUseRCPatrol setting...
↑ Help talk:VisualFileChange.js#Error in installation instructions?