Wikipedia:Editors are not mindreaders
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Put yourself in the shoes of other editors. How can they distinguish the incomplete, unreferenced article you've just created but plan to improve from one that will never be improved? |
If an article you've created is tagged for deletion, put yourself in other editors' shoes. Should they have known you have grand plans and will be adding more detail and references soon? How should they have known that?
New articles are created every few seconds. Some are well written, thoroughly referenced, and meet notability guidelines without any problems. Many other articles are very brief and unclear in their significance and often lack any references. This creates a dilemma for new page patrol volunteers. Is this the first revision of a future featured article or is it something that will never be improved? Editors who create unreferenced, very short articles or articles consisting mostly of red links can help prevent this head scratching and avoid having their contributions marked for deletion as well.
Use your userspace
[edit]One solution is to create a new article in a subpage of your user or user talk space (example). New pages created in the user or user talk spaces will not show up in the list that new article patrollers regularly review. Once you've completed your work, move it to the main namespace where articles reside. Remember, there is no deadline. Take your time to create a well-crafted, well-referenced article before introducing it to others. This is especially true of biographies which are subject to higher sourcing standards than non-biographies, due to WP:BLP rules, articles on medical or psychological topics (which require all statements to be sourced to high-quality sources, such as university textbooks), and articles that aren't going to garner lots of contributions from other editors immediately.
The Draft namespace can also be used.
Let others know you aren't finished
[edit]If you must create the article in the main article space, because you feel that the article is urgently needed, consider adding the {{underconstruction}} tag to the top of the article. This timestamped tag lets other Wikipedia editors know that it is a work-in-progress that you intend to improve in the very near future. This approach works well when you will complete your planned work on the article within a day or two. If your plans stretch out over several days or weeks, consider using your userspace.
Controversial articles
[edit]If you want to create an article that is likely to be controversial, you may even wish to create it offline (e.g. in a word processor such as Microsoft Word), save it on your personal computer, and not put it into Wikipedia until there is a strong reference for every claim, and you are confident that the article is worded in a sufficiently WP:NPOV manner so that it won't be AfD'd immediately. If you create a draft in your user space and it is deemed to be problematic, it can be deleted under the "Miscellany for Deletion" (WP:MFD) guidelines.