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Draft space, backlog, article creation: question

I posted a question here - maybe someone has insights into the above? Thanks. Samsara (FA • FP) 15:14, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Draft namespace added to ContentNamespaces

gerrit:171024 is "enwiki: Add Draft: namespace to wgContentNamespaces". So http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php now includes: 

'wgContentNamespaces' => array(
    '+enwiki' => array( 118 ),

Among other things, this means draft pages now appear in Special:Random (I got Draft:Spidersweb around the 10th time), and Special:ShortPages includes drafts instead of only articles, to great annoyance of editors working on ShortPages. This and other possible consequences at mw:Manual:$wgContentNamespaces all sound bad to me. I don't know how mirrors typically choose pages but the change may also cause more mirrors to include drafts. Has this change for draft been requested or discussed by the English Wikipedia? I think it should be reverted unless somebody knows better consequences, and the bad ones can be avoided. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:38, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Great! That was fast. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

advertising drafts

any recommendations on how to advertise on an article that a related draft is being produced? maybe only on the talk page? thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Incubation

There is a long-standing consensus that articles may not be incubated unless they have gone through a deletion process. See criteria 4 of Wikipedia:Article incubator#What cannot be moved into the incubator and criteria 3 of WP:USERFY#NO. This is because incubation is a form of soft deletion and must comply with the deletion policy. I have therefore made this edit as this essay is supposed to reflect consensus and there is no evidence whatsoever that the consensus that was alleged by this essay actually exists. (Plus which, the certain result of allowing bold moves into the draftspace would be large numbers of inappropriate moves, so this is a bad idea). James500 (talk) 09:29, 11 February 2015 (UTC) @User:Jackmcbarn: Regarding this edit. Criteria 4 of Wikipedia:Article Incubator#What cannot be moved into the incubator does not refer to being "deleted or undeleted". It says that an article can't be incubated without going through a deletion process (which does not necessarily involve being deleted or undeleted), such as an AfD nomination. I don't see how a move into the draftspace is functionally different to a move into the Incubator. The functional difference between this and userfication is so small that it is clearly not difference enough to matter. In any event, this page says it is supposed to reflect consensus. Where is the evidence of that consensus? Please identify the policy, guideline, RfC or other discussion that decided that non-admins can move articles out of the mainspace on their own motion. It certainly isn't WP:BOLD, because that guideline doesn't apply outside the mainspace, and is concerned with updating articles, not moving them, and certainly not with cross namespace moves. What this essay proposes would make an absolute mockery of our deletion processes by offering a route to effective deletion with no admin oversight. It is also guaranteed to result in move warring on an epic scale. James500 (talk) 19:47, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

@James500: Re criterion 4, my bad, I looked at #4 under "#What incubation is not". In practice, though, I often do see articles moved to Draft space. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:58, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Editnotice

Wouldn't it be logical to automatically have an editnotice show when creating a new page that checks whether a draft already exists by the same name in draftspace? I can't imagine this hasn't been discussed before, but the conversations trailed off in the archived talk discussions. czar ♔ 22:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Support - and vice-versa as well, so people are aware of drafts with name conflicts with existing articles and cases where someone may have copied-and-pasted from Draft: to mainspace and ignored the "there is a draft article on this subject" editnotice if such an editnotice exists. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:37, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Vice versa apparently already exists with a small note czar ♔ 11:18, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Support - This was tentatively discussed at MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext#Draft_Namespace but went nowhere. If a draft article exists, editors should be at least made aware of it before starting a new one. - hahnchen 17:00, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Support - since those will often be seen by new editors, we should be careful about how we describe this fact lest we encourage people into making more cut-and-paste moves. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:22, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Support This is definitely needed. I needed to self create edit notices in the mainspace for drafts I am working on for some high-profile films. I needed them to ensure users didn't create the articles because the drafts exists, and because it is against the WP:NFF policy. So some form of editnotices should be made, not just the little text hatnote that there is now. Maybe something that could be customizable? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:59, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Support - This would help avoid a lot of doubling of efforts. BOZ (talk) 08:10, 9 November 2014 (UTC)


What to do about redirects left behind after drafts are moved to mainspace

Should cross-namespace redirects from Draft → (Main/Article) namespace be routinely deleted, or left behind? Should there be a deletion process for these? If nothing is done about this, soon the draft space will be really cluttered up with redirects to mainspace. See Category:Redirects to the main namespace, which is not a large category (drafts aren't populating it—yet). Wbm1058 (talk) 16:47, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I think at the moment, Template:db-r2 or template:db-g6 are what should be used on the draft space article. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:59, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
  • {{db-r2}} : This template may meet Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion as a redirect from the main/article space to any namespace...
    But it's not a redirect from main/article space... it's a redirect form Draft space
  • {{db-g6}} : This template may meet Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion as a page that needs to be deleted to merge histories, reverse a redirect, or perform other non-controversial technical tasks.
    But it doesn't need to be deleted to perform another task. The "other task" – moving to mainspace – has already been performed
Neither of these seems appropriate for this. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:10, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
{{Db-u1}} could be used by an editor after moving a "draft" out of their userspace. But now we have a special namespace for the purpose. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:19, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
{{db-g7}} may be used by an editor after moving a draft out of draftspace, provided that the mover was the only substantive contributor to the pages prior to the move. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:17, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
Right, but this discussion is about what to do when you are not the only substantive contributor, or there were multiple substantive contributors. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:32, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't see why not to just leave them. Occasionally they may be useful to preserve a link to the draft, and cluttering up draft space isn't actually doing any harm. Monty845 17:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
I suppose. Special:AllPages/Draft: shows the redirects in italics. I was thinking that if someone wanted to browse through drafts in progress, they may not want to wade through the redirects. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:49, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
Well duh. I should have noticed the "Hide redirects" checkbox on the special page. Considering that, I'll agree that just leaving them is OK. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:32, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
WP:G6 says Uncontroversial maintenance. The Deletion page (admins only) has the drop down box (used for the deletion log) that says for G6:- [[WP:CSD#G6|G6]] Housekeeping and routine (non-controversial) maintenance That would be sensible to me - what need is there to keep? It's just housekeeping - I think you are maybe reading too much into the actual {{db-g6}} template wording. Ronhjones  (Talk) 23:53, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
No, redirects are not always just housekeeping. Often there are many links to the old article name on talk pages, deletion discussions, user pages, help pages, etc., that are broken by removing the redirect. However, there is a bot that goes around updating the links, so eventually the redirect may not be needed, but this takes time. I had my wrist slapped when I was new at AfC for nominating some of these for deletion, and was told "redirects are cheap". —Anne Delong (talk) 03:57, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
I've been adding this to the usertalk, and clearing the redirect from the userpage. Is that okay?
==Your draft article==
I've moved the draft to [[Draft:BUNNYBUNNY]] as the preferred location for [[WP:AfC]] submissions.
Please feel free to continue to work on it there. Thank you, ~~~~
Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:06, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Yes. A very good idea. DGG ( talk ) 18:25, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer a scenario where redirects from draft to the mainspace could be routinely and summarily deleted but not one where their deletion is required. Sometimes it may make sense to maintain a redirect (as Anne Delong points out above) but I suspect that most cases are much simpler, which means we shouldn't bind ourselves to an unusual case when trying to work generally. Protonk (talk) 16:43, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Can we grant reviewers the right to move from draft namespace to main namespace (and from wikipedia talk:* to draft:*) without leaving redirect? Having someone else to clean up after them sounds like a royal pain. --Gryllida (talk) 23:19, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

More bureaucracy and instruction creep. O)nly admins are allowed to move without leaving a redirect. Why not just leave it as it is and get freviewers to tag the redirect for deletion? Such deletions are hardly likely to make admins retire from burnout. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:39, 12 February 2015 (UTC)


Let's categorise

Alan Liefting... and all... forking from here at tech village pump...

In my view the Draft pages should be in content categories for wikiproject people to pick them up in the first place. Contact of people with deep knowledge of a topic with the relevant newcomers is important.

(That this software or people did not install this extension or some code with similar functionality seems odd. You'd be able to view fresh category members limited to a namespace at ease.) --Gryllida (talk) 02:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Related discussion. --Gryllida (talk) 03:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

BTW this was added by Unscintillating in this edit. At WP:AI, quote: "Mainspace categories are hidden by placing <!-- --> around them.". Need to find who added that there in a few moments... --Gryllida (talk) 02:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

And at WP:AI it was added by ThaddeusB in this edit. I can see what we did here. Incubator articles are a higher standard than a random draft, yet they are not in categories - I would like to categorize them both (incubator and drafts articles) for the reason mentioned above. :-) --Gryllida (talk) 03:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Related essay: Handling new article submissions#Reviewing (and then scroll up too). --Gryllida (talk) 09:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think draft articles should be categorized in content categories. There's a reason they're in draft space rather than main space: we don't consider them ready to be presented to the unsuspecting reader. This means they don't show up in standard internal searches, they're not indexed by external search engines, they're not linked from main space and also, they're not members of content categories.
Attracting wikiproject people's attention is a good idea, but since draft articles have a talk page, that can better be accomplished by adding the project banner there. Wikiprojects get daily reports about new pages tagged for the project, but not for new members of tagged categories. Many new submissions lack categories, and for AFC people it's easier to find a matching wikiproject than to figure out what categories are appropriate. @GoingBatty: one could even consider if BattyBot, when removing drafts from a certain content category, should propagate any wikiproject banners from that category to the drafts. That could improve involvement of the project people.
Regarding DPL: from the discussion you linked it looks like DPL on enwiki is not just a matter of enabling the existing extension, but of finishing the development of an extension that can handle that large wikis. — HHHIPPO 21:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
why are we not using the Deletion sorting mechanism to notify the projects? It doesn't require either categories or tagging. The existing screens need to be tightened a little, but they do work for new articles and should be able to work for drafts also. DGG ( talk ) 18:31, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
Deletion sorting is semi-manual. It requires a human editor to go through each AfD page, decide on some suitable DELSORT lists, add a notice like these to the AfD and also make corresponding edits like this and this to the actual delsort lists. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
Hm:
  1. HhhippoThought categories bear a technical nature, to ease maintenance work, not for end users to surf them. With this thought in mind, adding drafts to a category would sound reasonable.
  2. I wouldn't like to use wiki-project banners at all, anywhere: they are manual work which aims to categorize, which the categories already do, and to assess articles, which should be done by some means other than templates on a talk page. Talk pages are for, err, talking, — and templates are for including pieces which need to be included many times: {{Perl}} is a mildly good template usage example. (Accessing without manually editing a template is something Wikidata could address at a point, probably.)
Due to the second point not being ready, we could wait with categorizing here. But the first point needs to be discussed and/or addressed in the meanwhile. --Gryllida (talk) 22:51, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
  1. I'm afraid that's not what WP:Categorization says: content categories are explicitly meant for readers to browse them.
  2. There's pro's and con's and supporters and opponents of WikiProject banners. The current status quo is that we have them, and I think it would make sense to use them also in Draft space until we decide on, and implement, a different system. — HHHIPPO 20:00, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
@Gryllida: it is completely wrong to place draft pages in content categories. We are building an encyclopedia for WP:READERS. They don't want to see draft pages and they don't have to see draft pages. It is bad enough that some editors clutter up the content categories with templates, images, user pages etc. Editors have to get over the idea that we are editing an encyclopedia to be read by editors only. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:28, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
I can;t argue with that, Alan. Thank you for wise words. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:45, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
I can see the benefit of categorizing drafts especially as the number of drafts grow, but they should not be categorized in the same categories as published articles. They should have categories unique to the draft namespace.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 13:00, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
  • I disagree with the comments of Alan Liefting as they are clearly wrong. A proportion of our readers will read anything (or at least almost anything). They would rather have an (imperfect) draft article than no article at all (provided the draft doesn't consist entirely of lies or other useless content). In any event, some of the content in the draftspace actually belongs in the mainspace, and is only being held back by the timidity of its creators or by reviewers who don't know what they are doing. Indeed, one could argue that the draftspace exists to protect editors (especially new ones) from trigger happy new page patrollers, rather than to protect readers from "bad" content (as we may have worse stuff in the mainspace). I can think of arguments against categorisation (such as increasing the prominence of content with BLP problems), but they have nothing to do with the notion that our readers don't want to see any drafts whatsoever. James500 (talk) 21:27, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Is Draft space succeeding?

Is there any evidence either way that Draft space is producing drafts that become articles, or that editors pointed to Draft space get a better reception? Is there an advantage for an editor to add content to draft space over adding it directly to mainspace, or by using their own userspace? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:13, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Drafts that become articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/recent&action=history — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 09:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
That is a lot fewer than I expected. only several per day are making it through. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:22, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Which is way more than I expected; I was thinking a couple per week. "YMMV", eh?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:38, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Guardians of the Galaxy (TV series)

A draft was created for Guardians of the Galaxy (TV series), while a redirect existed at the article space name. Instead of getting the redirect article deleted, the moving editor did a copy and paste. Well, I tried moving the article to user space to leave the article space name vacant, but the system now forces redirects, thus still an article exists in article space. I requested speed deletion of the user space copy & paste version and for the redirect. Both of which were rejected and the C&P version moved back by @Cryptic:, who seemed to be aware of the draft. I have now added a db-move to the article name to allow. Is this correct or do I have to treat it as a contested deletion?

But the basic problem exists, a draft is created with an appropriate redirect at the article name. Editors stumble around attempt to get the draft into article space over the redirect. Spshu (talk) 13:28, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Draft submission rule

How about a rule when your submit a draft to be migrated to mainspace, and it is declined by one editor, when resubmitted, a different editor must look at it, not the same declining editor? A second opinion is always best, that way the biases of one editor do not carry over. Just like medical advise, a second opinion is better than the same opinion given twice. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:52, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Userspace draft template

If anyone would like to comment, there is an edit request at Template talk:Userspace draft about whether users should be able to tag pages in the Draft namespace with {{userspace draft}}. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:34, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

linking to drafts from mainspace?

Is there a guideline or policy governing whether a mainspace article may link to a draft, as in Old revision of Genesis Foundation?

My instinct says that we should at least strongly recommend against this, but I can't find an explicit guideline that covers this situation. The closest I have found is this guideline at WP:LINKSTYLE:

Do not create links to user or WikiProject pages in articles, except in articles about Wikipedia itself (see Self-references to avoid).

Thoughts? —Tim Pierce (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I would say that they should not be allowed. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:41, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree that, since drafts are transient, we shouldn't be linking to them from articles. I would suggest that you propose the change to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:52, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Mainspace should not link outside mainspace, except for category links, and through links in maintenance tags. If something in Draft space is worth linking to, move the information to mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:11, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
I concur with all of the above; WP:LINKSTYLE simply hasn't been updated to account for the draft space, and should be fixed in this regard.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:37, 13 June 2015 (UTC)


@Redrose64, SMcCandlish, Ahecht, SmokeyJoe, and Tim Pierce: Editors are using draft links in redirects for films, music and TV shows. Examples of these redirects are Sinister Six (film) and Swish (album). Sinister Six is a Spider-man film that was originally to come out in 2016, but now is tentative for 2018, if at all. Swish is a Kanye West album that was announced atleast back in December 2014 with a single released from it and tentatively was to be released in spring of 2015. Normally, I delete redirects to draft space. These draft noticed started appearing on films schedule to be released upwards of six years away. Captain Assassin!, I and a few others have discussed and thought it was a good idea for films that were nearing filming. People are still encouraged to edit, but the article wouldn't be moved into mainspace till filming has commenced. Other editors now see this and have started to plant "flags" every time some big news has been released. An example is Ant Man and the Wasp was announced today and a redirect with a draft link goes up. I remove the draft link notice, but I'm reverted. Along with today's announcement, other films were pushed back... Black Panther (2017 film) is now atleast a 2018 film. What's next? Possible political candidate pages for 2020 U.S. elections?

Should these links be stopper per the above discussion? If not, should there be some rules or should there be a free for all? Bgwhite (talk) 05:32, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

  • My opinion: Mainspace should have no links to draft space, even indirectly. If you have reason to argue for the link, better to move the draft to Mainspace. Articles don't have to be perfect. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
  • @Bgwhite: Redirects from main space to draft space should be speedy deleted per CSD R2. I'm torn on what to do about the message box with the link, but my sense is that there isn't any real harm since most users would never see it. However, creating a draft for a film where the article is more than six months from meeting WP:NFF probably isn't a good idea, as the draft namespace wasn't designed for long-term storage of articles (note that I wrote this before I saw that you were using the 6 month criteria already, so I guess great minds think alike). --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 06:43, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
One more thing I should add is that the correct way to do this is to create a template with some standardized wording (for example, I think that "the article has already been created in the drafts space" is misleading, but wording such as "please note that a draft of this article has already been started at ...", along with an invitation to contribute to the draft, is better) and then let that template go through WP:TFD if there is opposition. The template would have to be strictly limited to drafts about future events that DO pass WP:CRYSTAL and either aren't ready for mainspace because they need improvements (better sourcing, removal of promotional language, WP:BLP violations, etc) or they don't meet another guideline such as WP:NFF, and the template should explain why that draft isn't in mainspace yet. We don't want people creating redirects such as 2040 Summer Olympics that redirect to Summer Olympic Games and link to a draft -- at that point the person starting the draft is basically doing a useless "first post".
The template could also include {{R with possibilities}} and automatically blank itself if the draft were deleted. I would, however, be careful using such a template to link to WP:AfC drafts (such as the Swish example) due to their ephemeral nature and inherent WP:OWNership. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 07:03, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
Concur with SmokeyJoe and Ahecht's CSD R2 reasoning. We should never be pointing the readership to userspace or Draft: namespace drafts. Disagree with Ahecht's do-it-with-a-template reasoning, for that reason. PS Ahecht, please reduce the size of your stacked sig, or unstack it. It's causing line-height problems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:21, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I was alerted to Bgwhite's new discussion, due to them starting a related discussion on my talk page. Bgwhite has an issue, in my opinion, with a) with the draft space being used for long term article creations (more than six years) and b) the use of notification templates on mainspace redirect articles (mainly for upcoming films) notifying users of the draft articles. I am here to address both of these. First, per Tim Pierce and RedRose above, linking in these templates to the draft space should not be allowed and can be rectified. However, Bgwhite seems hellbent on completely removing these templates, as evidenced in this edit (among others). These notification templates, which you can view as they appear here, are meant to notify users (especially IPs and unregistered ones) that mainspace articles for these films are not allowed per the WP:NFF guideline. It directs them to mainspace locations where they can find more info on the film (and previously to the draft article, which has since been removed from the wording, and displayed on the redirect's talk). Now why are these here? Because without them, there is consistent article creation, many times right when the film is announced. And I can attest, that since these notices have been used, premature article creation has been virtually zero. Additionally, this code does not harm or impede the redirect, yet is still informative beyond hidden text when one goes to edit the article. Now as for the draft space being used long term. If I'm not mistaken, one of the proponents of the creation of the drafts space were editors of the film project, as a place to construct these articles outside of a user's sandbox, for all to contribute (with articles previously created in the article incubator, which was not really approved of). Yes some of these films are a some years away from beginning to film, but that doesn't mean there isn't relevant news about them today being released, that is either inappropriate or too indepth to include in the other locations that mention them in the mainspace. So to summarize my thoughts and what was said above, mainspace articles should not redirect directly to the drafts space and there is no harm in having the edit notices to inform/warn editors about not creating articles for topics (mainly upcoming films) as long as these don't link to the draft space. And if drafts have become stale for a good period of time, yes we should consider not having them. But if they are being actively edited, there is no reason to remove them. (Note: many of these examples and opinions were made in direct relation to the draft articles related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, the drafts I contribute and actively participate in. If the examples I said are being done differently elsewhere, I'm not aware of those and would welcome the dialogue to help rectify them. But the articles in relation to the MCU films are well maintained and watched by myself and other experienced editors to ensure the guidelines are followed, and the relevance of having a draft in the first place is ensured.) - Favre1fan93 (talk) 05:18, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with the edit notices that don't contain draft links. I have only been removing edit notices that contain links to draft space. The one I removed today from Captain Marvel was a mistake. I remove anything with a link to User or Draft space that show up on here. I removed over 20 today that contained draft links for movies, people and music. For an example of a person, Brianna Hildebrand that was added by Czar back in June. Czar moved the article to draft space and left the draft link notice.
Favre1fan93 has also been adding message on the talk pages of the redirects instead of the redirect themselves. The messages do give links to draft space articles. I have been removing those too, which Favre1fan93 does not like.
Draft links are being left on Marvel Universe films, DC comic book films, Disney (animated and Star Wars), other films (such as Independence Day, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), music, books and people. Bgwhite (talk)
I apologize for some miscommunication on my part between us. I believe Bgwhite and I are now understanding each other better (I hope). However, per what was decided about above and at WP:LINKSTYLE, draft links (or other space links) should not be in the mainspace; they are perfectly fine on talk pages. If that wasn't true, we'd have a whole lot of links on talks needing to be removed. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:45, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Request for old stale pages in draft namespace

Hi, I made this suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Abandoned_Drafts#Request_for_old_stale_pages_in_draft_namespace as well but I was looking to make a request for a list of old stale drafts in draftspace. I was thinking of asking for a list of all draftspace pages that haven't been edited in two years (one year or 18 months is probably more on point but let me try two years and go from there. Proposals for a category or mass inclusion have been rejected so it'd have to be manual review. Those won't have AFC banner since anything older than six months without an AFC would show up under G13. Basically it would be a manual review of the pages for MFD or for adoption (which I think could be done as "I've adopted the page to take it back and put it under the AFC banner") but I'm open to ideas. My thoughts are maybe a 2 year old check once every six months as a backlog project for Abandoned draft or something. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Isn't there a bot that tags them {{db-g13}} after six months or so, which means there won't be any left that are unedited in two years? --Redrose64 (talk) 08:16, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
That should happen only for drafts created through AfC. Drafts created from other processes are not candidates for CSD G13. Diego (talk) 12:52, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

@Ricky81682: Here ya go: User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report. These are pages that haven't been edited in 6 months. 2 years is not feasible as that would be before we introduced the Draft namespace, I believe?

There's some interesting stuff in here, much of it deletable. Also lots of promising content that can be taken advantage of, and other content that now has a mainspace counterpart. The "Tagged" column refers to whether {{draft article}} was added to the page, which puts it in the category Category:Draft articles. Any page that's worth keeping should probably be in that category, I think. Let me know if there's more information the bot could fetch. I was also going to query for redirects that have 0 links to them, but that's a massive query it turns out – and redirects are cheap, so not really much of a concern. Best — MusikAnimal talk 16:10, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I see you're also working through Category:Stale userspace drafts. I can have the bot generate a similar report for these, showing the page length, number of revisions, etc. That might help identify those that have potential and those that are essentially test pages. — MusikAnimal talk 16:18, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
If we are truly looking to clean up these drafts, I think we should exercise a little WP:IAR. Many of the ones with one or two revisions are either test pages or contain very little content to the point it has no potential whatsoever, and the author has made little if any other contributions. I think we can save time and bypass MfD for such pages, and delete them as meeting one of the G-criteria, perhaps G6 in particular. Meanwhile there's lots of vandalism that we don't even need to question deleting, along with some G5's and even attack pages. — MusikAnimal talk 18:27, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm working through stale drafts through Wikipedia:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts/Stale drafts. You don't need to use IAR so much as use template:inactive userpage blanked and blank the page. Anything more and there are users who do object (even taking these pages to MFD has some objectors). If it's an incomplete incomprehensible draft (as a lot are), blanking is fine in the long, long shot that the user comes back and works on it. That's presuming that the editor is actual inactive so it is quite a tedious process. What would really help is if someone could have a bot guess the article title and put a link to mainspace version, if it exists (next to each link item I guess). A lot of those articles are copies of mainspace articles whenever they get listed for deletion. You can tell by looking at it by time through Category:Userspace drafts created via the Article Wizard and Category:Userspace drafts and seeing the hundreds of pages based off template:infobox video game from the 2008-2009 time period when various video game articles were up for deletion. It's the same reason you get a bunch of discussions like this and have to weed these out in chunks. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:20, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Yeah userspace drafts are certainly a different story as they exert some form of ownership over it, so I wouldn't delete there at all unless it's blatantly inappropriate.
I think I can help you with the bot needs. Just going to list out what I'm able to do:
  • Identifying if there is a mainspace counterpart, such as the right column at User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report
  • Report if the user is inactive (maybe no edits in a year?)
  • Report if the user is blocked, and show the block reason
  • Check if the page creator is the owner of the userspace. This could help identify vandalism
  • Create dedicated pages for drafts that meet any of the above criterion
So for instance, you might want a dedicated page for drafts not created by the userspace owner, as you might be able to fly through those quickly. Or a dedicated page for drafts for which there's a mainspace version, etc. I see you've got your list sorted alphabetically. We could also create another index of pages that are sorted by page size. This helps wean out the not-so-promising drafts and those that have actual potential. Just some thoughts. The bot generated the report of 6,000 stale draftspace pages in about 5 minutes, so the aforementioned tasks shouldn't be a crazy expensive operation — MusikAnimal talk 20:39, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I really don't think there's any shortcuts here. It's just going to be a long process. That list is alphabetical but Category:Userspace drafts created via the Article Wizard works by age. It's pretty quick to fly though if you look for pages with "New article" and the detail wording and nothing else and just Template:inactive userpage blanked those. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:36, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Not G6. Is it really the case that none of the other WP:CSD criteria fit (for example, if it's a test page, can you justify G2)? G6 is used far too often as a "none of the others fit" excuse, which it should not be. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:52, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
If none of the CSDs match exactly, round up OFUN (Objective, Frequent, Uncontestable, Nonredundant from Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Header paraphrased) documentation and propose the new CSD rule. I am also poking at User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report with the oldest drafts by either MFDing them (to establish the uncontestable/frequent components), redirecting them to an appropriate mainspace article or subsection of an article, requesting a histmerge to unify a stale Copy/Paste, or poking the author of the draft to see if they're interested in improving the draft or to exercise the "User requested deletion" CSD on their own. Hasteur (talk) 14:01, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
G11 works for when the name is obvious, otherwise U5 is something that some admins will look over and consider. There's a lot of IP address content as seen here with people creating pages in their non-logged in address for some odd reason so U2 comes up as well. For even the worst drafts, it's easier for me to just "adopt" those and dump those into AFC to be deleted under G13 in six months than to take them to MFD or otherwise. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:36, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Tool for moving to draftspace

I review a fair amount of new, undersourced articles and many of these need to be kicked to draftspace and tagged for AfC. Is there any tool that already automates this? (moves page+talk to draftspace while suppressing redirect, updates wikiproject tags, sanitizes page of cats & tags, and marks the page as an unsubmitted AfC draft) If not, this macro would be incredibly useful. czar 17:38, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a useful addition to the Page Curation tool. Maybe suggest it over there? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:10, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Page Curation § Tool for moving to draftspace

Draft articles and Wikidata

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T122806

Draft articles can be linked to Wikidata items (as long as those items have links to real articles on other Wikipedias). Then inter-language links to the English draft article appear in other language versions of the article. However there are no links from the draft article to the other language versions.

This strikes me as the wrong way round. When writing a draft you would want to refer to the other language versions. But arguably, we should not be linking a draft article from an article in mainspace.

Does anyone know anything about this? An example can be seen at Draft:Niall Horan whose corresponding item is Niall Horan (Q775231). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:11, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

No one else has commented on this. Perhaps it is not a big issue. But I am intending to open a ticket on phabricator to look at this bug. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:34, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
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