Wikipedia talk:Drafts/Archive 6

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RfC: Standard for draft articles

The consensus is against the proposal. Cunard (talk) 22:27, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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There has been some confusion as to the purpose of the draft namespace as well as the minimum standard for draft articles. Given this situation, I would like to propose the following standard for the draft articles in the draft namespace.

A draft article must clearly indicate the notability of the topic (but not necessary its importance which can be added later.) This requirement can be met, for example, by giving a relevant reference. The draft article should also be written in such a way that it is clear that, some day when it is developed enough, it can be moved to the main namespace.

Since I'm not a native English speaker, please feel free to suggest different phrasing if you can think any. Please also note what is missing. We don't require draft articles to have AfC reviews or some kind of submission procedures. This is very natural; there is no requirement like AfC submissions or deadlines for main space articles and it would be unnatural to demand more stringent review requirement for draft articles.

My hope is to dispel some confusion like the draft namespace is only for AfC or some other training-wheels-uses, as it is not. Also, most importantly, draft articles should be not deleted unless they fail these community-agreed requirements and not some other personal requirements editors impose as they feel like. I believe we should agree on what to delete before we discuss how to delete them. (I'm happy with streamlining the deletion process.) -- Taku (talk) 03:36, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense. If drafts must meet notability requirements then we wouldn't need the draft namespace. They would simply exist in article space. The purpose of the draft namespace is to nurture articles that do not meet these requirements and to transfer them to article space once they do.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 08:33, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I disagree. In Wikipedia, we should require all articles to be about the notable topics, drafts or not. The notability is not something that improves after editing. The purpose of the draft namespace, at least as I understand, is that it is a place to develop articles on the topics that should be covered in the main namespace. There are many instances when it is preferable to place drafts not in the main namespace. For example, one key information is missing. -- Taku (talk) 08:43, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

That is incorrect. We do not delete or transfer articles to draft namespace if they can be improved by normal editing. Articles in the mainspace need not be perfect. In fact most are not. Furthermore, articles can be created in the mainspace, and incubation is a key use of the draft namespace. Many topics may not meet general notability guidelines at the moment, but may in the near future. These are instances when the draft namespace is appropriate. This is also indicated by Template:Draft article.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 08:57, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we're not using the notability in the same sense. By "notability", I don't mean an article reachs the quality of the inclusion for the main namespace, but by it I mean the article must be about a notable topic. If a draft is about, say, some generic non-notable elementary school, then it should be deleted since the "non-notabliry" in my sense is unfixable. The draft namespace is not an alternative place where we cover topics we don't cover in the main namespace. No, no. That's a wrong use. The notability requirement for drafts is necessary to respect Wikipedia:NOTWEBHOST. -- Taku (talk) 09:19, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps, when I hear "notability", I think of it as defined by WP:GNG. One of the reasons why WP:AI was disbanded was because its purpose was made irrelevant by WP:DRAFT. But yes as in WP:AI, a topic must likely become notable. My garage band is likely never to be considered notable but some other future event may.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 09:30, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. Your first reply and the documentation of {{Draft article}} offers indication that notability in draftspace is contingent upon whatever content the draft may happen to contain at any particular point in time. However, in the reply directly above, you refer to GNG. I'm quite certain there's a difference between the two and that the difference is the impetus for this discussion. Regardless, this obsession about "not yet notable" is puzzling. In general, there are precious few editors fighting a losing battle of trying to turn Wikipedia into something more than just a random, half-assed scavenging of government infobases and recent trending topics. Specifically, there are a few of us who have attempted to use draftspace on behalf of various WikiProjects to develop content on topics where notability was established long before Wikipedia or the web in general ever existed, and because of that, a Google search is not going to yield an abundance of low hanging fruit in terms of reliable sourcing. A few AFC participants have chosen to declare war on these efforts simply to enforce their particular (peculiar?) POV. When these editors indifferently extend their WP:BITE complex to experienced editors who know what they're doing, that's called battleground editing. There have been far too many RFCs related to draftspace these past few months, all pretty much rooted in this sort of behavior. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 08:28, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

@TriiipleThreat: Some context since the editor trying to lead this charge has convienently declined to show the axe they're trying to grind. In 2014 Taku created numerous draft pages that are completely non-viable (example Draft:Frobenius splitting). We let these go for a while becuase there is no demand (currently) on draft space articles that are not part of AFC to "improve or face deletion". Several editors have noticed Taku's past creation and have suggested that they fix these drafts. Taku points at selective interpertations of the generally accepted policies to justify that "I can finish these when I want and you can't make me". This infuriates users (like myself) who are trying to give everyone the same opportunity to create a new page (and not some editor who went on a massive title land grab in draft space to claim creation credit). As such we have started taking these creations to MFD to force the improvement and to render a community based consensus to clean up the namespace. Hasteur (talk) 11:55, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

@Hasteur: I get you don't like some of draft pages I have created, probably because we have different ideas of what the draft namespace is. All I'm saying is that we should come up with a set of the objective standards for drafts, as opposed to personal preferences, so that we don't need to have a case-by-case deletion discussion. -- Taku (talk) 02:57, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if Hasteur or any other AFC participants will ever disclose the axe they're grinding. It would probably take next to zero effort to dredge up numerous past discussions in which AFC participants make comments to the effect of "Those of you who think that we're here to collaborate need to get off of your high horse". I get it that you believe that one group of editors are here to do all the real work and that your only role is to pass judgment on their efforts. This is why AFC's only practical purpose is to be a one-way judgment pipeline for editors looking for that kind of ego stroke. However, the effect this attitude has had on content and on enforcing the "Wikipedia is a joke" mentality should be rather obvious to anyone. Because there's just so damn many of them out there, I wouldn't want to have to compile a list of articles whose history shows one editor going to a certain amount of effort and a bunch of hotshit editors showing up afterward to turd-polish the thing damn near to death, oftentimes through brain-dead script editing which reveals a drastic lack of human discernment. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 08:28, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

No A pointer to a book does not make a creation in draft space protected. At minimum it needs to meet WP:STUB (i.e. A stub is an article page that, although providing some useful information, is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, and that is capable of expansion.) I would explicitly note that the pages Taku is trying to save are below this standard and should be deleted. Hasteur (talk) 11:59, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Interesting. The way I see it is that stub articles are permitted to exist in the mainspace, so there is no need for a stub draft. Keep in mind that everything in the mainspace including stubs have to meet WP:GNG. So a stub by definition meets these conditions - particularly the "significant coverage" clause - of WP:GNG but is short due to a lack of information. On the contrast, while drafts should be covered by reliable sources they may fall short of what is deemed significant coverage but at that same time are likely to be covered by additional sources in the not too distant future.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 12:38, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree requiring draft pages to meet the stub quality defeats the purpose of the draft namespace. Good stubs should exist in the main namespace where they are more visible (and so can be developed more quickly). As I see it, draft articles are about notable topics but for some reasons they are not of the quality required in the main namespace; e.g., stylistic issues, some chunk of non-English texts that require translation, lacking clear statements of the importance of the topic, etc. It is desirable to allow the creations of articles on notable topics, especially by newbies. The draft namespace is a place to put drafts that are just not ready for the main namespace. -- Taku (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Hasteur, would you please clarify what you mean by "a pointer to a book"? If you're getting at what I think you're getting at, it would also be a rather lengthy list of articles whose sole purpose is not to provide information to readers about what's notable, but to provide a link to an editor's favorite webpage/website under the guise that it generally passes muster as a "reliable source". You know, it's the exact same thing that we call WP:LINKSPAM whenever it's not enclosed within ref tags, even though IMO there's little or no difference. This edit demonstrated to me that Hasteur isn't necessarily carrying on this crusade against Taku. There are others engaging in similar behavior, so I'm not trying to single out Hasteur. Nonetheless, Terry Gardiner served in a state house of representatives for ten years and was unopposed for reelection in his final term. He was first elected to office at age 22 and was elected speaker of the house at age 28. That sounds like someone who is quite notable to me. As he left public office over three decades ago, has been busy running a fisheries business in the years since and is not on a lecture circuit trying to sell a book about his life, a cursory glance at Google search results won't make this notability as obvious as you may like. Perhaps more to the point, it's explicitly understood everywhere else across the encyclopedia that state legislators are inherently notable. So just what part of "state legislators are inherently notable" do you feel entitled to exercise veto power over? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 08:28, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

• Following Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Incubation, "Articles which have potential, but which do not yet meet Wikipedia's quality standards, may be moved to the Wikipedia:Drafts namespace, where they may continue to be collaboratively edited before either "graduating" to mainspace or ultimately being deleted." If there is potential, that's fine. However if you create a cryptic stub that no one can figure out the potential, then it can be discussed for deletion. The onus is on the person who started the draft to put out the actual potential there. Otherwise no one else is going to know whether or not it does. It still needs to move towards graduation or it will be deleted. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:36, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if you're proposing something concrete. Do you agree with the proposal or not? To respond to some vague complain, some topic is specialized so that type of the article requires editors with necessary background, unless you are willing to acquire that knowledge yourself. To state the obvious, specialization is not a good ground for deletion. -- Taku (talk) 00:09, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
    • I oppose your proposal. Again, it makes zero sense. The draft needs to have potential. A MFD is a method to see if there is consensus on whether there is potential. The responsibility for providing enough context for people to figure that out is the people who propose that it be kept. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:47, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
      • What doesn't make sense? Trying to establish some standard for drafts? Or specific details of standards? We agree the drafts need potential. We agree what need to be deleted need to be deleted. We disagree on specifics. (Also MfD is "not" a review process but the deletion procedure, not all drafts need to pass MfD before moved to the main namespace. That's a wrong use.) Let's try this: Do you have a counter-proposal? -- Taku (talk) 02:59, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Somehow related: I don't think we want to require the drafts to establish context, in contrast to the practice in the main namespace. In the main namespace, the articles are visible to the general public so we want to make it clear what the articles are about even without having technical backgrounds. In contrast, the draft articles are meant to be read and edited only by the editors so the draft articles need only to be understandable to those who concern them. -- Taku (talk) 00:26, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
    • If you don't want to establish context or make it clear to anyone what your draft is about, I'm not sure why it's everyone's fault if people want to delete it. The purpose of drafts are to get them to mainspace, not for an academic exercise in stream-of-consciousness writing from our editors here. If I just posted a series of coordinates that correspond to a city and then yell and scream at everyone is someone proposing the random numbers for deletion because I don't actually say "this is for a city in country X which is thus inherently notable" it's not their fault that I don't provide the context. If you started something, presumably you are the best person to tell others what it is. If you won't, why should others be tasked with the responsibility of volunteering their time for your hide-the-ball guessing game? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:39, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
      • But if I understand your argument correctly, there is no need for the draft namespace. Why do we need to put articles in the draft namespace that can already be put in the main namespace? The draft articles are drafts since they are below the standard required in the main namespace. As I understand, it is alway preferable to put the articles in the main namespace not in the draft namespace. To respond to the last point: no, no one is asking you to take care of all the pages in the draft namespace. You can always leave the drafts to those who can develop them. The draft namespace is not your responsibility. Finally, if you had trouble understanding the drafts, the correct course of action is to ask the creators to provide the details or just leave them to the other editors. Why do you must delete a draft just because you can't understand it? -- Taku (talk) 02:59, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
        • Drafts that aren't ready for mainspace but have potential can go there to be worked on. However it isn't a storehouse of junk and random musings. If you want that, go buy a domain and dump whatever single sentence random things you want. If I were to put up random numbers on a page and no one understand what it was, is wrong of me to delete it? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:51, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose and support a speedy closure since requiring notability for drafts was just rejected by a large-scale RfC less than a month ago. See here. ~ Rob^Talk 04:28, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
  • As a side note, clearly demonstrating notability isn't even required in the mainspace, where our relevant WP:A7 CSD only requires a credible claim of significance and articles which do not demonstrate notability in the article itself are routinely kept at AfD if participants can find sources outside of those included in the article which demonstrate notability. Further, "importance" relates to no standard whatsoever on Wikipedia and is subjective as well. I'd judge plenty of articles in the mainspace as "unimportant". Hell, I write a lot of articles I'd consider "unimportant". ~ Rob^Talk 04:31, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

PROD for drafts (RfC now closed)

See here, where the discussion for a PROD-esque process for drafts has been closed with consensus to initiate that process. We should hold off discussions on how to implement this until people have time to challenge the close, which I'm almost positive will happen. Everyone should be aware of it, though. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:45, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Is draft space restricted to drafts of entire articles?

This information page assumes pages in draft space are drafts of entire articles although it does not explicitly forbid drafts of only a section of an article. Help:Userspace draft makes it clear that pages in userspace may be drafts of parts of articles. When I start to create a draft I automatically get a template announcing it is to be an article. Are drafts of sections of articles, or of project pages, allowed? I suspect IPs can't create anything in userspace. Thincat (talk) 16:34, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

They could be parts, drafts of paragraphs, or even just information used to make an article. eg a list of references. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:47, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Must a draft be complete?

This question is in the same vein as the previous one. Do we want to require a page in the draft namespace to be complete? In the sense, for example, it should give enough context or references or it is complete content-wise. I believe the answer must be "NO"; it is alway preferable to put a complete draft in the main namespace, where it is visible to both editors and the readers and so there is more chance for improvement. The purpose of the draft namespace, as I see, is to hold incomplete drafts, those that we don't want for the public to see. -- Taku (talk) 04:05, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

• Depends on what you're talking about. When it comes to the draftspace, pretty much anything goes as long as it isn't profane, promotional, or copyvio (the three main reasons something would be deleted). Now when it comes to approving an article for the mainspace the article should be "complete" in that it has enough content and sourcing for the article to pass notability guidelines. We shouldn't be approving drafts where you can't easily identify what the article is about (ie, no over the top grammatical or spelling errors, makes sense, etc) and/or the article lacks coverage to establish GNG. Both are important, but the latter is one that absolutely must be done before accepting a draft. There's no point in accepting a draft that doesn't pass GNG, only for that draft to get swiftly deleted if it ends up that it's on a non-notable topic. Last year there were multiple AfC drafts taken to AfD, to the point where some started questioning whether or not the reviewer(s) were actually looking at the article. So basically, at the bare minimum AfC drafts should be complete when it comes to notability. Everything else can be fleshed out once it goes live, unless the article is so brief that it becomes problematic. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:39, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

• The issue here, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Basic theorems of algebraic K-theory, if of an single editor unilaterally spinning out a subtopic/alternative approach from an article. Doing so seems to violate both WP:DUE and WP:NOR. I think, when the parent article exists and is in good shape, subtopics of the parent article should be developed as sections within that article before actions are taken to spin it out. If the draft were to attract new editors, the result would be content forking. In other words, DraftSpace is for drafting new topics, not for redrafting existing topics, or subtopics. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:04, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Why such requirement that a draft correspond to what amounts to a single topic in mainspace? Drafts are not required to pass GNG [P.S.: nor any other article content guideline]; they may be collections of references, or any material that "would belong in a finished" article", whether it has a coherent structure or not.

Draft space is the closest thing we have today to the original concept of a wiki, and per the Wikipedia:Editing policy any content, no matter how WP:IMPERFECT, can be the basis from which a fully developed article may grow with time; yet it doesn't need to resemble the final thing from the start to be valuable.

Why should drafts satisfy the mainspace content guidelines if they are not content, or otherwise resemble anything like articles at all? For me, it is enough that their content doesn't contradict anything that Wikipedia is WP:NOT.

Moreover, draft space is being used nowadays for redrafting existing topics (see how it was succesfully used to rewrite nothing less than Gamergate controversy), so your vision of how it should (not) be used doesn't match with how the community is using it already. Diego (talk) 11:07, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Parallel editing of the same thing on different pages creates attribution hazards, and for that reason alonw should be avoided. Not forbidden, short term drafting on the side can and has been been productive, but a number of caveats apply. Caveats are evident on the page you link. You make a deal of the GNG, but this has nothing to do with the GNG, it is a question of content forking. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:44, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Parallel editing of the same thing on different pages creates attribution hazards We have a guideline explaining how to do it, I don't see that as a reason to forbid a whole line of utility for the space.

As for content forking, that's a problem for articles when someone tries to create a separate point of view, but drafts are not articles and are not exposed to our readers; it's no different than copying a bunch of paragraphs to the talk page and improving those there, just more convenient. You wouldn't want to delete inactive talk pages, restrict what can be copied there, nor mandate that they contain a single course of consistent content at a time; their only requirement is that they are kept focused on collaboration for improving the encyclopedia. Heck, we complaint against WP:Flow because it doesn't allow us to experiment with content wiki-style, and the one tool we have for wiki-like experimentation, we want to deface it by adding constraining guidelines that will cripple it?

The more I think about Draft space, the more I compare them to Talk pages in terms of usefulness and policy requirements; basically they serve for the same purpose, minus the inline discussion, and they would be best served by the same behavioral policies. Diego (talk) 14:24, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

A utility is fine but it's basically OR of one editor's beliefs on what constitutes "basic theorems" for a subject that haven't been edited in over two years. If I created a draft on "basics theorems of acting" or anything and said I don't need to provide sources and left it around arguing that my opinion on what the basic theorems should stay around here in the guess that someone else will actually support my "basic theorems" approach, people would delete it. There is no objective criteria for what constitutes this expressed here. If there was, then no one would object. Otherwise, I don't care if the page is userified and sat around for all time but I don't think people should just get draftspace as infinite, indefinite space for anything that could ever exist. Otherwise, Diego's theory will just encourage people to go create their own forked versions of content when they don't their way in mainspace. That used to happen commonly with the world's oldest people tables and dozens of the same topic sourced differently everywhere. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:05, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Again, how is that different from having that collection of theorems on a talk page or user page? You wouldn't request that a talk page were deleted if somebody placed such content there for requesting commentary and developing some paragraphs that could potentially be used at an article, would you? Talk space is not "infinite, indefinite space for anything that could ever exist" even if we don't go removing everything there that gets stalled; somehow the WP:NOT policies plus archiving are enough to get keep them in good shape without a need to delete everything that wouldn't be allowed at main space (isn't that the whole purpose of having separate namespaces?). Diego (talk) 23:22, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

I feel like I understand where SmokeyJoe is coming from. There is a reason why we don't want content fork or other types of duplicate efforts in the mainspace; because that would be duplicate of editors efforts and because, as principle, we want to have a single article on each notable topic (incidentally, the draft mentioned was not content fork, but that's irrelevant for the debate.) The error in this reasoning is that the draft namespace is not the encyclopedic part of Wikipedia. I, and I believe many others, don't see the draft namespace as a proper part of the encyclopedia. A draft is a complete copy of a main article. So what? Why is that automatically wrong use of the name space? I believe any use of the namespace is basically permissible as long as the editors are using it for the purpose of building the encyclopedia. The draft namespace is not part of the encyclopedia but just some convenient space for the content development. It follows that, at least in my view, it is perfectly ok to have incomplete drafts or some content materials not correspondent to a single topic, again, as long as they are encyclopedic contents or using them for the purpose of content development. (Obviously we don't want some people to use the draft namespace for the purpose completely unrelated to Wikipedia, like say having a chat about a dinner plan.) -- Taku (talk) 23:37, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Kinda Neat (podcast)

Since various AFC participants were constantly interfering with the new page patrol I had been performing on behalf of a particular WP for years and years, I quit doing it for the most part several months ago. Part of the problem entailed reviewers ignoring the hints I was leaving regarding notability or non-notability or suitability otherwise of a particular topic. This submission was just recently declined. However, it appears closely intertwined with Intuition (rapper). In 2013, as seen here, an AFC reviewer decided to unilaterally disregard clear community consensus formed here based on the mere existence of weak-for-BLP sourcing, with zero accountability to any of the editors involved in forming that particular consensus. The end result, yet another BLP about a barely notable person with the strong whiff of suggestion that our purpose here is to help bottom feeders promote their careers (as if we didn't have enough of that already). To be fair, I have a faint memory of this person having had a very minor hit song which sampled "I Go Crazy". If this is the case, then that song generated enough buzz to where I could buy that he belongs on the very bottom rungs of the notability ladder. The bottom line, if you have a higher opinion than I do of Intuition's notability, is there some sort of problem with integrating that submission into the existing article? I've had to do just that who knows how many times before in order to save valid encyclopedic content from deletion. Evidently, we have editors populating AFC who believe that every individual piece of business on the encyclopedia exists in a vacuum and that it's to be viewed in terms of "free beer or a fight" with no middle ground. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 19:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Nominating a Draft initiated by a now inactive user

Is it appropriate to nominate a draft in the user space of an inactive user, e.g. User:Sephiroth storm/19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command? If one is allowed to nominate an other user's work, how can I do that appropriately? I'm not interested in any credit. I just think this Army Unit needs to have a wiki. --Trilotat (talk) 04:35, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Don't just slap an AFC template on it, and them abandon it. But if you think it is suitable for mainspace, then go ahead and move it to 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, and improve it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:17, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Should articles contain links to draft articles?

An editor added a link here to the article Rich The Kid. That link directed readers to a draft article . Should Wikipedia readers be directed to draft articles which may contain incomplete or incorrect information? There doesn't seem to be any policy or previous consensus about this. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 11:56, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#General points on linking style says:

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

PrimeHunter (talk) 12:49, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Much appreciated. Magnolia677 (talk) 13:06, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Clarification over main-space to draft-space moves

Before being challenged in an RfC, Wikipedia:Drafts#Incubation 1st dot point read:

Articles are incubated as a result of i) a deletion discussion, ii) an undeletion request, iii) userfication, or iv) a bold move from article space.

Subclause iv was directly challenged by the RfC (Wikipedia_talk:Drafts/Archive_5#RFC:_Clarification_over_main-space_to_draft-space_moves).

The RfC obviously repudiated the unqualified text of subclause iv. Of the 35 !voting participants, only two supported unqualified. Reading through the RfC, if you ignore the one prolific badgering supporter, the RfC is overwhelmingly against unilateraly bold instant userfication by a non-author.

While the closer, User:KrakatoaKatie's didn't speak directly to the nature of the overwhelming objection to the subclause, the closing statement "Way too many <caveats> for there to be a consensus either way" is a clear statement that the status quo (subclause iv unqualified) is not supported by consensus.

Her reinstatement of the pre-RfC language is incompatible with her close.

My assessment of the RfC is below. 14/35 posted an explicit or obvious rejection of unilateral draftification. Another 10/35 gave strong, objective caveats. Together, these groups represent 69%.

Together, this 69% would support complete removal of subclause iv, in favour of using subclause i. Arguably, I suppose, the required discussion doesn't have to be at AfD. For example, a discussion and agreement with the author would constitute a "draftification discussion".

Another 9 (26%) gave subjective caveats, clearly not supporting unqualified language, but implying that an experienced editor should be able to make the decision and act on it. This large minority makes a lot of sense depending on the sort of case considered. A new substandard article by a new editor? An established article on a contentious subject? Should WP:NPOV problematic articles be unilaterally draftifiable?

I suggest (and edited) a rewrite of subclause iv to

"a bold move of a new and unready article from article space"

I think that at least this much caveat is required. "Bold" impies that the editor knows what he is doing and is prepared to explain it. New and unready articles are the main issue, especially when written by a driveby editor. I think old articles should definitely go via AfD if they are so bad that they can't be fixed by editing.

To not tighten the language is to allow a loophole for unilateral speedy deletion of anything from mainspace. The old language allows anything to be moved, and the subsequent dot points unreviewed deletion of a history-free WP:CNR. It is very plausible that an admin might perform this action without examining the article moved. If the admin does examine the article moved, the whole thing would have been better done through the PROD process.

No. Clear opposition to allowing immediate unilateral undiscussed draftification of articles. (14 in the group)

RfC initiator User:Hahnchen

No, that would be disasterous for the reasons that I previously explained User:James500

No User:Davey2010

No. User:Od Mishehu

No User:Wugapodes

No User:Chris Troutman

No User:FoCuS

No, unless done through AfD (which is subclause i) User:Nathan2055

No. User:SilkTork

No. User:Hobit

No User:Ricky81682

No User:A2soup ("unless explicitly agreed to by author" is contrary to the intent of the clauses, which is by non-authors)

No User:Andrew D

No. At least, not unilaterally without discussion. User:DGG. (the language of the subclauses reads to empower unilateral draftification.

Objective caveats. (10 in this group)

Yes - it's perfectly acceptable to move a newly created article in terrible shape User:Sergecross73

Yes but they generally shouldn't. User:Starblind

Yes. ... "under- or inappropriately sourced new articles" ... & other multiple detailed caveats User:Csar

"Yes but" multiple strong caveats. User:TriiipleThreat

Yes, but only for new articles. User:Kaldari

Only for new articles, recently placed in mainspace and woefully unready. User:SmokeyJoe

within reason - especially for brand-new or just-moved-to-article-space articles that haven't already been through a review process. User:davidwr

Usually no. User:WhatamIdoing

Yes per User:Starblind ... with interweaving caveats User:Soni

Conditional yes if it is quite clear that the article is not in a state for publishing as an article User:Steel1943

Subjective caveats. or a defined PROD-like process. (9 in this group) Note that WP:PROD doesn't require objective justification.

Yes per WP:PRESERVE, as it's a good way to keep around content that doesn't belong as a stand-alone article and for which there's not an obvious place to merge User:Diego

Not instantly. A PROD-like process. User:Hellknowz

Yes with notification User:ferret

Contextual - Sometimes User:The Mental Asylum

"is such a move ever allowed", then my answer is "obviously, yes". If you're proposing disallowing such moves, I would say "no". User:Rhododendrites

Depends on the situation. User:Anarchyte

Contextual/Depends User:LukeSurl

Yes, using caution and sense. ... yet generally done rarely. User:KillerChihuahua

Yes, under PROD User:Mendaliv

Yes. no limitations. (2 in this group)

User:Unscintillating. Made 14 posts to the RfC pushing for no restrictions outside limitations of WP:BOLD, mostly badgering, and few bothered to respond to his repetition. He frequently makes correct but barely relevant points.

Absolutely yes User:slakr

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:48, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

This is why poorly structured RfCs waste everyone's time. FWIW, I agree with SmokeyJoe's proposed wording for the incubation (psuedo-)guidelines. Kaldari (talk) 01:09, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Without taking a position on the specific proposal at this point in time, I'll say that the distinctions between "no limitations" and "caveats" doesn't strike me as entirely clear. The quotes from me, Anarchyte, LukeSurl, KillerChihuahua, The Mental Asylum, Diego, et al. seem like the default position -- not disallowing, but acknowledging it is a bold edit (and like any bold edit, it's best in certain scenarios, best executed with care, best to err on the side of communication, and can be undone by those who disagree). I don't know that there's reason to assume the "no limitations" group actually thinks "no limitations" as though they would be ok if someone e.g. moved all articles to drafts, moved the main page to a draft, etc. The point of my comment in the original RfC was that the question seemed unclear. It was a simple question being asked: effectively, is it ever allowed. Some people chose to elaborate, providing caveats/context, and some did not. Because it was a simple question, I don't think it's fair to operate under the assumption that everyone was answering in a nuanced way (i.e. I'm not so sure it makes sense to find a nuanced conclusion in answers to a question that did not provide for nuance). Maybe I'm being pedantic, though. That's not to say I support or oppose this change, however. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:10, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Yours, Rhododendrites, was in fact the most difficult contribution for me to force into a summary. Often the threaded discussions were important, but including thread discussion points well would lead to an analysis that is longer than the RfC itself. Apologies to you or anyone else I may have mis-summarised. I'd invite you to review the RfC directly and then consider the actual Project page edit. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:21, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

I !voted an unqualified no, but I am also open to any reasonable compromise. DGG ( talk ) 01:32, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree per DGG. I very much prefer the language proposed by SmokeyJoe over what we have, though I still worry it will be used as a backdoor deletion (though hope the use of the word bold will largely address that). Hobit (talk) 04:17, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe's proposal is an improvement; I worry that it doesn't go quite far enough. My first choice is removing it entirely, and leaving such moves to WP:IAR. (Also, why isn't "discussion among editors" in the list? If I create something, and you suggest that it be moved to draft, and we both agree, then why should we have to use some additional bureaucratic process?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

My preference too would be to not include iv at all. Was I giving too much to the group supporting subjective caveats? I would alter ii, it should merge with i, and same with iii, except it also covers draftification by the author (userfication is usually on request by the author). Articles may be draftified i) by request at AfD or request at WP:REFUND subsequent to deletion; or ii) by page move from mainspace by the sole author, or with the sole author's agreement.

On the related question of draftification of an inactive user's userspace draft, some hold that this is better done by copying the content to a new draft than by interfering with another's userspace. However, many support bold page moves from userspace to draftspace, and have done so without ensuing complaints. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:51, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I am surprised that the clause was allowed to remain. We have established procedures for removing inappropriate articles, and protections in place to avoid "bold" editors unilaterally removing articles from mainspace. I suppose the closer felt that the RfC question was too vague, but adding that clause was highly inappropriate in the first place, and not in line with Wikipedia:Deletion policy, so it should not remain. The discussion here is the wrong way round: if anyone wishes to add that clause, it needs to be discussed and gain consensuses. Adding a clause which is against policy, and then having a discussion to get rid of it, is not the way we generally do things. There's WP:BOLD and there's WP:RECKLESS. Changing policy by stealth is not the way to do things. I am removing the clause, and if anyone wishes it back, they need to provide a rationale and get consensus. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:18, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

The "anything goes" clause, which is what we currently have, would never have gained consensus had it been discussed. I guess it's congratulations for sneaking it in, so that the only discussion that we did have was for its removal. I'm not sure how much clearer the the original RFC question could have been, it was a succinct one line yes/no question - and instead of answering "no", editors answered "yes, but with a process we have not yet invented". And the closure placed the onus on creating such a procedure on those that err on the side of inclusion.- hahnchen 14:58, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Repeated reverts to the discredited version

Here Unscintillating (talk · contribs) has again reverted to the pre-RfC version, reverting again attempts at compromise wording. He has removed the discussion pointer. The edit summary "restore stable/consensus version of article" misleading, is plain false. That version has a stable history of being disputed. The RfC demonstrated an overwhelming lack of consensus for it. Unscintillating has reverted to a version that only he and one other out of 35 participants can be read as supporting, a version the provides for a backdoor undiscussed deletion of any article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:53, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

It was Unscintillating who originally added the "anything goes" clause, with the edit summary merge from WP:AI, depite WP:AI explicitly forbidding the movement of articles that have not undergone the deletion process. - hahnchen 14:58, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Draft creation form

Just wanted to start a thread to note the change I made to simplify the draft creation input form. This is unrelated to the current policy language dispute, but please ping me here if anyone disagrees or wants citations to usability research for why I made the change. Thanks! Steven Walling • talk 20:34, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

This is doubtless the change Steven refers to. I don't see any problem with it: Noyster (talk), 22:51, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposal regarding redirects from page moves in draft space at the Village Pump

There is a proposal regarding redirects left from moving accepted drafts to article space being discussed at the Village Pump. If you are interested in participating in the discussion, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Draft Namespace Redirects. Cheers! Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:09, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Request for Recommendations

For quite a while, there are multiple articles that I would like to do a MAJOR overhaul of ONLY the tables, but allow other editors to join the "fun". I'm NOT wanting to replace an entire existing article, but instead ONLY sections within an existing article, though for some list article it might end up turning into a replacement. Is "Draft:" the only place to do this, OR can we create a temporary subarticle like "Article/NewTable" similar to how we do it in User space? Thanks in advance for feedback! • Sbmeirow • Talk • 12:21, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• You can use a draftspace page or a subpage of the article's talk page. However, in either case, make it very clear what you are doing, on the article talk page, and the forked drafting should only be active for a short time. It is a problem for attribution if both forks are actively edited. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:51, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Bot to automatically add Template:AFC submission/draft to Drafts

A few months ago, I proposed a bot over at WP:Bot requests without thinking to gather consensus here. (I apologize for that.) Before typing your answer here, please read my proposal on that page to see my reasoning, etc.. Now, should we have a bot to automatically add {{AFC submission/draft}} to articles moved from the mainspace into draftspace? As noted on the proposal page, there should be an opt-out ability for more experienced editors. — Gestrid (talk) 22:14, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• Strong oppose, for the same reasoning stated in the previous discussion. Articles moved from the mainspace into draftspace are not meant to be deleted, much least automatically without human supervision, which is what this bot would achieve. Having opt-out means that editors would need to be aware that this automatic process exists in order to avoid it, which means that a majority of articles in which editors want to WP:PRESERVE content would be lost, without the responsible editor ever noticing it. Editors who want any page automatically deleted should have to opt-in to the removal, not the other way around. Diego (talk) 08:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

• @Diego Moya: I've already mentioned what should be done about notifying editors about the opt-out thing. Simply link to it in the same way ClueBot links to its "Report false positive" page. As for deleting drafts, I'm not requesting an adminbot that could actually do that. I'm simply requesting a bot that adds the aforementioned template to pages moved from article space to draft space. Nothing else. If I'm not mistaken, users are already notified if their draft is about to be deleted one month prior to the actual deletion. — Gestrid (talk) 22:31, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

• The overwhelming majority result of your proposal will be the auto-deletion of the drafts through the G13 route. It is a backdoor article deletion process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:52, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Of two minds on this. On the first We're not supposed to be a perpetual repository of non-encyclopedic content. On the second, unless the page is coming from a positively actived process (like the article creator) we shouldn't be forcing AFC on anybody. Hasteur (talk) 21:01, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose, not because as described it is so bad, but because it supports a flawed and repudiated notion that third parties may unilaterally draftify articles they don't like. Third party draftification should be done via AfD, and any time limit should be a question for the AfD discussion. I maintain that no one is well advised to put an AFC tag on their draft, it is a broken process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:49, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support There is no need to store content indefinitely if it's never going to be touched again, and it can easily be undeleted. There's nothing in the rules that prevents this from happening manually. ^Avic_ennasis @ 16:34, 19 Kislev 5777 / 16:34, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

The problem with that argument is, you don't know which ones will never be used again, an which ones will be needed in the future. And deleting them makes it really hard to review them in order to tell them apart.

"Undelete" and "easy" don't mix well in the same sentence. For a start, it's impossible to review a large amount of deleted documents to request undeletion of the few you may be interested in - editors can't assess whether accessing the contents of a particular deleted page might be valuable, as they can't read them before making the request.

The solution to this need (requesting all potentially interesting documents to be undeleted, and then delete all of them again except the few that were actually needed) is the same as simply letting them archived but readable, except that it would involve a lot of more work and friction). Diego (talk) 17:19, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. A solution looking for a problem, and the simple fact that many (not all) people who can write code believe that automation is the answer to everything. Developers are already considering other MediaWiki extensions for cross-Wiki implementation for the Draft namespace so let's not jump the gun.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:31, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Continued discussion on G13

I'm not sure where the best place for this type of the discussion is, so I'm posting this here. This continues the deletion review on Draft:Abstract homotopy theory at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 January 5.

The argument I wanted to make in the review discussion is that the current system of having draft pages of two types, AfC-type draft and the other, seem to confuse the editors. The G13 deletion of a non-AfC draft is wrong but is happening too often. I believe this is due to design flaws; i.e., we should redesign the system rather than keep instructing the editors about the correct usage (I for one am tired of pointing the misuse of G13.) There are three obvious solutions:

1. Retire G13: Perhaps I'm missing something but do we ever need to delete anything in the draft namespace? True, some (or too many in some estimates) drafts are not worth keeping. But they are also not worth deleting, either. Since the draft namespace is not part of the encyclopedia proper, it is not necessary to periodically clean-up the namespace. One possible argument for the clean-up might be that not buring high-quality drafts into low-quality ones. But this seems theoretical; I have not seen an empirical evidence that keeping the number of drafts low leads to the increased productivity in the draft namespace. In fact, the contrary is the case; the deletions discourage users from starting drafts.
2. Abolish the AfC process altogether: I have seen this argument somewhere (but I'm too lazy too busy to locate it). The process was created because some new users are not allowed to start an article in the main namespace. Now that new users can start articles in the draft namespace, there is no need for the process.
3. If 2. is not possible, split the draft namespace into the two namespaces, the one for the AfC and the other for other drafts.

-- Taku (talk) 00:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

My first thought is that retiring G13 would be consistent with in Wikipedia, there is no deadline. I can see one possible argument for deleting old tired drafts in draft space, and that is to make way for a better draft. In those cases, the better draft can be moved over the old one, or the old one deleted then. I see no real harm in letting editors putter around with stupid drafts in draft space forever. The real problem isn't drafts that are not submitted for six months; it is drafts that are submitted six times (for which MFD is the answer). Robert McClenon (talk) 01:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, retire G13. Drafts are cheap and there has never been any good argument presented as to why they should be deleted just for being old. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 03:26, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

The genesis of it was the combination of a massive backlog at AfC and reviewers who weren't applying common sense to obviously unsuitable drafts. In addition to hopeless but generally harmless drafts indefinitely languishing, a cursory review showed the adamant refusal to delete almost anything from AfC had led to the accumulation of thousands of copyright violations, attack pages, and spam (the discussions to implement G13 have all the relevant links). G13 was enormously helpful in clearing that out and keeping it from reverting to this state. I have no comment on whether G13 remains similarly useful today, but I would suggest that any proposal to modify or remove it also leave mechanisms to prevent useless and actively harmful pages from filling up AfC and draftspace again. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:46, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Those mechanisms are WP:G12, WP:G10 and WP:G11 respectively. If they aren't being applied where they should be, then AfC reviewers ought to have been educated on their responsibilities as reviewers; creating another criterion was a poor solution and did not actually solve the problem. Instead, we now implicitly allow these articles to languish for six months when they ought to be deleted immediately, along with possibly allowing its creators to go without review for longer than the CheckUser retention period, and at the same time we now also delete completely acceptable material at the six month mark for no good reason. We need to do better than this and a good first step is deprecating G13. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:06, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

My concern is that those criteria were there before G13 and it still got to the point it did. I'm not sure G13 in its current form is necessarily the only or best way to keep that from happening again, but it was much more effective than the status quo before it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Of the proposed solutions I think #2 makes most sense, but there are some solutions that are being overlooked. First, we could allow G13 to apply to any drafts in draftspace, whether AfC or not. Second, there has been a proposal previously of replacing G13 with a PROD-like process. There may well be other possibilities. However, implementing any solution, whether one of these two or one of the proposed three above, would require a large-scale RfC. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:22, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, we do need to delete things in Draft space. For examples, the crap like "Billy Jones is the sexiest in Frankenberger High", and the stuff that is advertising but doesn't get tagged as advertising. The advertising remaining after decline is due to reviewers not spotting it - and I find the same at CSD where people tag as A7 something stuffed with PR buzzwords. Redirects are cheap too, but we delete the more useless of them, don't we? If someone hasn't touched a draft in six months, they're unlikely to come back to it. If they do, a refund is cheap. I would like to know if there is any info on people looking for drafts and actually making them useful articles. I probably wouldn't see them, but would be interested to know if there are any. I say keep G13 or at the least replace it with a prod. Peridon (talk) 10:45, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• I agree entirely with The Blade of the Northern Lights and couldn't have explained it better if I had tried. Additionally, it's going to be needed even more so when lazy New Page Patrollers who can't get the NPR badge use 'move to draft' as a catch all because they don't understand the specifics of our deletion policies. Unfortunately, where we finally now have the 'no_index' restored and a special user group for passing articles for indexing, the community for some rason flatly refused to allow tagging to be done only by experienced users. As a result, the backlog is is growing even faster, articles are still being tagged by raw noobs, and unpatrolled articles will be released to the claws of Google after 90 days. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• As soon as text is added to Draft space, it is licensed for use anywhere with attribution to Wikipedia. NOWIKI stops reputable search engines from including these pages, but not mirror sites or anyone else. Web pages can link to them to promote unsuitable subjects. G13 is a blunt instrument, because it doesn't separate potentially useful material from the ever undesirable. Six months may be too short for a well-written draft about an entertainer, professor, athlete, etc., who marginally fails notability but has an ongoing career, for example (see this list of just a few of the topics that were days or minutes away from deletion). On the other hand, six months is too long between checks for the addition of copyright violations to drafts and failure to remove spam and other unwanted content, whether such drafts have been submitted to AFC or not. Perhaps drafts about reasonable topics without objectionable content but which aren't ready could be blanked after six months with a cover page "click here to view the former contents to decide if you want to work on this draft" (no admin needed), and other stuff could be tagged for deletion with a PROD-like reason but a longer time delay to account for the smaller amount of traffic.—Anne Delong (talk) 15:25, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• Agree with Anne Delong and Peridon! PR pieces put into mainspace are subject to review, but what's to stop an advert being left in Drafts with a link in the subject's publicity material, saying "We're big and important, we've even got a Wikipedia article, check it out here" and include all the promotionalism they want. Most readers won't make much of the presence of "Draft:" in front of the article title: Noyster (talk), 16:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I must admit the argument for preserving the G13 was very persuasive. I definitely get the point that "having it is better than not"; like democracy, it has a flaw but we need it. But I would like to repeat what led me to start this thread: I don't like the "status quo", the way the draftspace is used (or misused). I suspect the continuing use of G13 (or AfC) has to do complacency on the parts of the editors rather than the lack of alternatives (as some already pointed out). All seem to agree that the G13 is deeply flawed. So can I propose the following:

• The moratorium on the use of G13, say, 6 months.

The idea is to "force" us to be less complacent; as pointed out, many problematic drafts should just be gone, 6 month-old or not. We can already do this by the other deletion mechanisms. There might be a better way to deal with the backlogs which are destined to keep growing. Again the absence of G13 would force us to come up with such alternatives. At best we can learn whether the lack of G13 leads to a disaster (must I commit seppuku if so??) -- Taku (talk) 02:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• G13 was accepted by the community with the understanding that contributors would be notified of impending G13 discussions, in order to finish the article, or postpone deletion. . Unfortunately, the bot to maintain this system hasn't worked for at least a year , and nobody seems to have developed an effective replacement. The result is that restorable article drafts have gotten deleted by the hundreds, as nobody has been able to pay the necessary attention. I do not think G12 would ever have been accepted had this function not been available. Until it is, the precess is dangerous. We do need something of the sort, to clear out worthless material, The suggested alternatives are not satisfactory--while we should certainly be using G12 for copyvios more frequently, G11 has normally been used much more restrictively in draft space, because drafts are there with the intention that they be improved, and only the most extreme cases of advertising are normally deleted from draft space by G11. Unless a great deal more attention is paid to the MfD process than at present, it won't worn;t be workable--it does not currently receive the attention necessary for dealing with a hundred items a day or more. It has been argued that deleting improvable drafts is harmless, because the author or anybody else can ask for re-creation. But while the author may indeed notice and ask for restoration, nobody else is likely to, because nobody else will be able to even know about the existence of the draft. Kudpung is correct that we need to have this process, but util improvements are made, it is too dangerous to use. We must either abolish it or suspend it. (I suggest, when we do restore it, that it apply to all drafts, not just AfC--the difference is usually inconsequential). DGG ( talk ) 08:34, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Thank you for some background info. I wasn't completely sure if you support at least the suspension of G13. (But I think you do.) I want to think the following new deletion mechanism has a potential to be a good alternative.

In addition to the moratorium on G13, in order to address the backlog problem, I would like to propose the following PROD-type deletion mechanism. Create a tag that says an along the line

• The Wikipedia editors have raised a concern that content of this draft page might not be relevant to the encyclopedia-building part of Wikipedia; in particular, the page does not have a potential to become a main-namespace article when it is well-developed. This draft page might be deleted by a human or a bot if this concern has not been addressed within one month.

The idea is that this tag will allow us to say, in a polite diplomatic way, this draft page is a crap and get it deleted sufficiency quickly (but not too quickly). Note the tag canno be used just because the quality of a draft page is low or, most important, it cannot be used just because it is old. Also "one month" does not mean a creator is expected to finish the draft page, but he (or occasionally she) must show the materials are encyclopedic and useful for Wikipedia. The tag does not distinguish between a AfC draft and non-AfC draft, so should be easier to use. If putting this tag is disputed, the page should be sent to MfD. This tag should however be very useful to get rid of worthless stuff like ad pages; since the tag essentially indicates the page is worthless, from the pointview of Wikipedia. -- Taku (talk) 23:36, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• The bot that did the notifying was User:HasteurBot and it stopped in June 2016. To the extent that the concern about G13 is based on draft creators no longer receiving warnings before deletion, might it be worth considering reviving this bot rather than changing the system?: Noyster (talk), 01:49, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

There is still a bot checking the length of inactivity, isn't there? Someone or something is putting the 'green bar' on the template. As to 'a month', if anyone other than a bot has edited the article within six months it is not eligible for G13 anyway. I rather fail to see the value of keeping abandoned stuff that no-one is going to do anything with. If it is ready for launch, then launch it. If it isn't, what use is it going to be sitting there for years? I'm not a deletionist in that I try to get rid of stuff that's got potential. I do believe in getting rid of crap (which is what I joined Wikipedia to do), advertising and copyvio. No draft that fails G11 should be left standing just because it's a draft. If it's advertising, it needs total or near total rewriting, and deletion will bring it home to the author that we really do mean 'no advertising'. Peridon (talk) 10:53, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I also fail to see the value of deleting harmless stuff. Zero work is less work than any infinitesimal work. It is the curious nature of wiki that keeping stuff is simpler and requires less work than deleting, discussing and then undeleting. (I personally have always found this feature of wiki to be amusing.)

I believe the above proposals exactly address "I'm not a deletionist in that I try to get rid of stuff that's got potential. I do believe in getting rid of crap." G13, in the current implementation, is a mechanism of automatically deleting inactive AfC drafts. There is essentially no review (see the DGG comment) and so decent drafts are getting deleted. We need to stop this at least for time being and come up with an alternative. The wording on the tag I'm proposed above is tentative but the idea, I hope, should be clear: the tag allows us to say a draft has no-potential/crap. -- Taku (talk) 19:54, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

What no-one seems to be doing is addressing my point about who does anything with these allegedly 'decent drafts'. Does anyone do anything with them? Does anyone go through the drafts looking for things to finish off? Possibly DGG does. I've saved a couple into my user space rather than delete them - and haven't got any further yet. They are harmless. Yes. So is a mainspace article consisting of "Willie Freud is a flower arranger from Skyhawk, IL. He prefers to work with daisies in yoghurt pots." Where's the harm in that? Do we leave it for someone three years in the future to complete? Do we hell as like. But it's totally harmless. The daisies in your lawn are harmless - do you leave them there? Peridon (talk) 21:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

And the deletion is not a good solution, it's the worst: just get rid of em so we don't need to deal with it. I myself think doing nothing to those "decent drafts" is better than deletion. I know there is a view that the draftspace (as the name suggests) should be used as a temporary space to draft a new article. I don't subscribe to that view and I don't think there is a consensus for that view (see above). Wikipedia is just not built like a traditional encyclopedia. This is why the process like submitting articles and reviewing them (i.e., AfC) is a broken process. I know this means we could have very very old draft in the draftspace. But again why that has to be a problem. I have a tendency to start a draft and not finish it. But some novelists work like that; they only publish the works that meet their standards. We don't ask them to finish every piece of stuff they started. Thus, for me, the draftspace is alway going to contain some unfinished works; I see no problem with it. -- Taku (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I get (actually I don't) the obsessive need for cleanness; there should be no dast ever never and one must clean up the space periodically. As far as I know, there has been no empirical evidence that the cleanness in the draftspace leads to an increased productivity. There is an empirical evidence the G13 is causing real damages. One instance was Castelnuovo's contraction theorem; it was submitted for a review but the reviewer declined it to move it to the mainspace; that's, well, ok. But then G13 kicks in and it got deleted. That was wrong and it was later restored. If a choice is between cleanness and avoiding real damages, I choose the latter. -- Taku (talk) 00:10, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

On further discussion, I still don't see the need for G13. I see the discussion about a previous backlog of crud. However, I don't see the urgent need to get rid of crud in draft space. I agree that it is necessary to get rid of copyvio, BLP violations and attack pages, and spam. We have G12, G10, and G11 for those. What is the harm of keeping crud in draft space? Crud that is being repeatedly submitted, because the author doesn't catch on that it isn't notable, is a special case, but that is what MFD is for, and I have tagged drafts for MFD if they were being tendentiously resubmitted. I don't see why drafts can't just sit for a long time if they aren't being submitted to annoy the reviewers. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:54, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

". I agree that it is necessary to get rid of copyvio, BLP violations and attack pages, and spam. We have G12, G10, and G11 for those." We have those, but we don't have the editor horsepower and/or the community will to apply them. Spend some time in the G13 slush pile, and I believe you'll find that there are a surprising number of G11s and G12s there. (Not so much G10s, though. But actually go and do, say, two hundred G13 drafts, and be sure to actually attempt a copyright check on each. Once you've done this, I believe you will see at least what the concern is, even if we might need a different solution. --joe decker^talk 02:06, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• If we're going to stop deleting totally unsuitable drafts or drafts that have languished in complete disinterest for 6 months, then we can also completely dispense with every other mechanism of deletion and quality control as well. Today, 90% of all new creations by new users are total, unmitigated rubbish, but ironically, 99% of them are also totally harmless - no one is ever going to look them up or Google for them. Even total gibberish is harmless, why waste patroller and admin time getting rid of it? So why bother with deletion processes at all? Making room? Cleaning out junk? Nothing has ever been physically deleted from the servers anyway. Stopping deletion would also give an enormous boost to the WMF claims of growth in articles. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:54, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• I have a few G13-substitute ideas, but haven't formulated this into anything resembling a proposal. Some of these are probably mutually exclusive, too:

1. The various templates that categorize drafts by creation date ought to be standardized, and please code them to exclude talk pages. For example, the Category:AfC submissions by date/09 March 2015 lists an intimidating 54 pages, but 50 of them are talk pages for drafts that have already been moved to article space, or their redirects. The four remaining drafts should be able to be reviewed fairly quickly, and if they need to be deleted then so be it. The staggering number of pages in these categories that aren't actually drafts is probably driving away editors who might help.
2. Alternatively (or in addition?) there should be a set of categories for AfC declines by date. AfC reviewers normally leave reasons why a draft is not acceptable for mainspace, but that's pointless if there's not some convenient way for other editors to see those declines and help out, if they want to. Featured content works this way, more or less, we ought to do something similar for new and likely problematic content.
3. Standardize the new article submission process. Right now, a new editor's path to publishing an article is wildly different depending on whether they put it in their own sandbox, on a subpage in their user space, publish it to draft space, or just drop it in article space. We may want to consider restricting page creation in main space to editors with some lightened version of the autopatrolled right, and require everyone else to use draft space until they've got a few approved submissions under their belt. This would probably also help with some issues we've seen with new users being too eager to jump into new pages patrol. Of course it would also bite the newbies, and create a likely very substantial backlog as an obstacle to new content, both reasons why it's unlikely the community would go for it. Actually come to think of it I don't see how this is even really possible unless all new editors are completely restricted from editing main space (because we already have people overwriting redirects and dab pages to "create" articles), so probably just forget about this one.
4. How about categorizing drafts by subject? Maybe this is already done but I can't find the categories; I expect it could be done with a categorization switch in the AfC banner, much like AfD works (although there's also manual deletion-sorting). There's a lot of editors who could help improve drafts if they could easily find them by subject, and WikiProjects could probably also get involved.
5. On that note, make AfC an AfD-like process. List submissions for 7 days, with "speedy promote" as an option; allow editors to discuss reasons why the article should be created (e.g. "Create - the subject meets WP:MYFRIENDSGARAGEBAND"; "Delete - not recognized by WP:RS, and per WP:CRYSTAL", and so on) and let an AfC closer determine whether or not to promote the article. Obviously I just had this thought while my wife is waiting outside to give me a ride home and angrily texting me, it needs some work.

Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 21:04, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I want to think there is a solid support for the suspension of the use of G13 for time being. Am I right? Therefore, unless there is new strong opposition, in a next few days, I'm going to (actually ask an admin) to implement the suspension by modifying the template and the policy page. -- Taku (talk) 23:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

A broader RfC would provide the level of consensus needed for such a change. The discussion so far here is not so clear. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:44, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, G13 was the result of a broad RfC, and this level of change should be addressed the same way. --joe decker^talk 01:51, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Not seeing consensus here for suspension of G13 without an agreed replacement mechanism for deletion of drafts (not even put forward as a plain proposal until a fair way into this thread). Given that there is no compulsion to ever submit a draft for AfC review, and no equivalent of new page patrol in draft space, there could be just anything in there and as has been pointed out, although not Googlable these drafts can be found or linked to by other means: Noyster (talk), 11:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

*nods* In fact, they are consistently linked and Googlable by mirrors. --joe decker^talk 22:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Should I start an RfC? Perhaps, a simple support/oppose poll for the suspension of G13? Maybe I will. As for the replacement, I think there is the consensus that we need a replacement: (1) one that applies to both AfC and non-AfC drafts (I'm sympathetic to the view having two types of drafts is confusing and maintainance headache) and (2) one that does not delete inactive drafts without any review. I have proposed one replacement above. I think there is the consensus that the inclusion criterion for the draft space should be "potentiality"; the potential that a draft can be turned into a mainspace article someday. So we can have the "non-potentiality tag" and we can delete drafts with the tags by bots and by humans with some time delay. There are of course other possibilities. As G13 is causing real damages, suspending G13 meantime is a no-brainer for me. Like a cessation of hostility (love the term): people can work on the piece agreement while agreeing not to engage. But yes, given the magnitude of the change, an RfC is needed. -- Taku (talk) 23:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

On this note, would people's feelings on this issue change if the bot that sent the notifications were resurrected? I just found out about this discussion, and fortunately Hasteur made the bot's code public, so making a new bot to do the same thing should be very easy. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• DGG, the accuracy of what you said in the first sentence of your comment above is questionable. HasteurBot started notifying users one month before their drafts were G13 eligible following this discussion in july 2015. The system clearly hadn't been around since the inception of G13.

In my opinion, what we really need is delay period for G13, or in other words, we should convert g13 to a PROD-like process. This was proposed by me HERE (June 2015). The proposal had been faring well in terms of the supports before Hasteur came up with the counter-proposal ('Sidebar proposal') linked above that swayed many. Hasteur's proposal was that his bot would notify draft creators one month in advance of their draft becoming g13 eligible. Now that the bot has gone inactive, I think it's time to revisit the idea of conerting g13 to Prod. (Note that this was also proposed earlier at WP:DRAFTPROD - but the primary reason it was opposed was that the proposal text was too unclear and half-baked, and was even changed significantly during the course of the RFC.) 103.6.159.75 (talk) 14:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

all proposals of this sort will help the contributor only if they are active at the time, and will help nobody coming to WP to see if something has perhaps been already started that might help them write an article. I think it would be desirable none the less, if you do mean that it is 6 months until it can be applied, as an additional 7 day delay. DGG ( talk ) 01:45, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I have started the draft of a RfC on G13 at User:TakuyaMurata/RfC: G13. It will go live in the next few days or so. Please feel free to modify the wording or adding new questions if you can think any. -- Taku (talk) 23:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC) It's now running. -- Taku (talk) 23:57, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion re:drafts not submitted to AfC

Right, as a gnome who almost never talks to anyone on here my apologies if this is not a suitable venue but it's related to the above. Someone mentioned in the above discussions re:G13 that these stale drafts do not fall under G13 but are instead just sitting there cluttering up the place. I would argue that most of these qualify as test pages (seeing as they're the only edits made by the user/IP in question and appear to be them figuring out how to make a page and then leaving). If they were submitted they would fall under G13, most of them would be A7 regardless, and there is some vandalism sitting there. There's also quite a few that are just duplicates of existing content. This list is just over 6k drafts long.

However, there are some that are subjects which could possibly become articles (I made a little list here) and there are some that were made by users who are still active and who might like to shuffle them over to user space as forgotten subjects they'd like to write about.

I'm enjoying going through the list since it was posted above, but it has been pointed out (or at least suggested) that (a) we move potential candidates for articles out of Draft Space when nothing is being done, as is best practice (b) it's 6k drafts long and I am but one gnome. So it was also suggested that I ask in the Ideaslab if that other people would like to join me. Especially as I have nowhere to move them to.

Does that peak anyone else's interest as a project to deal with drafts that aren't falling under G13? Or do people think it's a good idea at least? The ones that aren't vandalism aren't exactly bothering anyone and it would be nice to collect a bunch of red links for content creators. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 17:29, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Btw I'm suggesting this as an alternative to putting additional pressure on AfC reviewers (or mass deletions) as these are literally 90% test pages of someone writing one line. They're at most suggestions of articles and thus it would essentially be collecting red links. But it would fork it into another forum where new people interested in content creation rather than reviewing could deal with them. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 18:58, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I've been looking at some of these. Not quite the case that 90% are one-liners – the MusikBot list is sorted by size and about half-way down you come to the likes of this or this, which merit looking into a little more. The 90% mark would bring you to something like this. A few are eligible for speedy, some are potential articles, and the great majority are harmless but hopeless – and not quite harmless because although not indexed for search engines, they are accessible in various ways to internet users who may think "So this is Wikipedia?" I've argued above that G13, far from being scrapped, should be extended to drafts never submitted, but that there should be a process for reviewing all drafts before they come up for deletion and salvaging those with any potential. Some way of recording reviews is called for so that reviewers are not duplicating each other's work. There have been suggestions for using categories and templates for this purpose. Are you aware of WikiProject Abandoned Drafts? - it has had spurts of activity since 2011: Noyster (talk), 20:24, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Everyone seems luckier than me when they go fish! If you look at my list it's really just one-liners. The WikiProject looks like a good idea if it can get more eyes on it (so I guess a basis for an IdeasLab proposal?) - we've also got WikiData now and it's easy to start an entry on notable subjects that have been abandoned. See this one on Daniel Bibona who is covered and mentioned elsewhere on wiki, or the Lindhope Spout. I'm not sure exactly what you'd do with that but it's a nice start. Could you maybe add those articles to the list? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 19:41, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

This is something related. Does anyone think it is a good idea to have a list of draft pages by subject? The idea is to make it easier for the editors (especially long-time ones) to discover drafts that can be worked on. Obviously, it is impractical to list all drafts, especially hopeless ones (e.g., my brother was born in ... He is good with ...) But there are also drafts that are on more traditionally encyclopedic subjects like science and math. For those good drafts, the list should be of manageable length. Some editors might not prefer to see their drafts appearing in such a list; but then they should develop their drafts in their user page not here. Also, the idea is this is a sort of mix of drafts and requested-articles. There are many instances that someone knows a topic is notable but is not covered in the main namespace. AfC is the least satisfactory solution; they needs to create a complete start article that has references, establish the context, etc. The list I'm proposing can be allowed to have red links so it can double as the list of requested pages. Fundamentally, this type of approach makes the process more wiki-y. Which is a key since the fundamental reason why the AfC doesn't work is because it is not wiki but is of the submission/review process, the very process Wikipedia rejects. -- Taku (talk) 00:37, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I very much applaud the intention to bring some order to the lumber room that is Draft space. The trouble with maintaining separate lists is that anyone coming upon a draft would not see whether someone else had already added it to a list, and would have to go searching to find out. A system of draft categories may be a preferable way to go: nothing on the scale of article cats of course, but a set of broad topics along the lines of those used in deletion sorting. Picking up Ivanvector's suggestion from last month: How about categorizing drafts by subject? ... editors ... could help improve drafts if they could easily find them by subject, and WikiProjects could probably also get involved.

A further category could be added: Draft category:Hopeless drafts [please substitute a more polite description]. These alone could be made subject to G13 - automatic deletion after a time lapse: Noyster (talk), 11:54, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

There actually is a whole hidden-world of drafts that I hadn't come across before this. None of them submitted to AfC - and a surprising number of them pretty much ready to go. Not entirely sure what to do with them! (Category:Draft-Class articles) Another interesting twist (though heaven knows how you'd link the two, or if it's helpful) is that these can be inserted easily into Wikidata - either based on mentions/references already available on Wikipedia or with a simple Google. Is that useful for structured data? That's above my pay grade - but just look at what was so easily pulled on this baseball player. Or the waterfall I put on with links to Commons pictures.

How would we resurrect a dead WikiProject in such a way as to be useful/sustainable? Is it possible? So much here! Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 12:12, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Two things I've been rolling around (I don't have a lot of time to comment today):

1. Tag draft talk pages with WikiProject banners? Flags in the banners already sort articles into categories by quality assessment, "draft" could easily be a quality level.
2. Add a flag to {{draft article}} that sorts the draft into one of some predefined categories?

Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:27, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I have previously objecting to people dropping tagging drafts for WikiProjects, where te tagger has no interest in the page and no intereest in the WikiProject. WikiProjects are groups of volunteers who volunteer to work on something of their choice. Dump extra stuff on them, and you destroy their wikiproject.

Sort drafts, yes!. See my old ideas at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts/Archive_5#Tagging_drafts. I think there should only be two classes on first pass, "promising" and "no hope". "Promising" should be exempt from G13, and are to be topics worthy of anyone helpping. "No Hope" should be deleted on any two qualified reviewers agreeing that it has no hope. High quality drafts should be mainspaced. There is no obligation to tag every draft.

Sort by subject? Absolutely not on the first pass. Sort the promising drafts, yes.

See my post above dated 23:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:09, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm basically on the same page but I think we don't need a layered system. Sorting-by-subject can double as some minimum quality assurance. It would show at least one editor looked at a draft and found it was not necessary to delete it. Besides subjects in science or culture, we can have a category "non-promising" (read hopeless) ; we can then delete the pages in the category with some time delay (1 month or so). -- Taku (talk) 23:37, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it important that: (1) the reviewers are qualified NPP reviewers; (2) deletion requires two reviewers to agree it is hopeless, and then no wait to delete. AFC and NPP have both suffered at times from too-fast reviewing, and in rapid review hasty decisions are made. Once two have declared it hopeless, why keep it another day? No one will review a one month queue of cruft. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:42, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm thinking the "non-promising" tag or category is akin to a PROD-like process; the pages in the category will get deleted automatically unless someone objects and put it out of the category. Sorting and reviewing processes should be one of the same; it is important to keep the process not-layered; that will be consistent with the spirit of wiki. -- Taku (talk) 03:14, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Taku, PROD outside mainspace has failed to be agreed to everytime it has been put forward, and I for one will continue to oppose it even in draftspace. We can talk about the downsides of it if you wish. There are several. One is that PROD outside mainspace is de facto speedy deletion, and the New Criterion Criteria, explained at the top of WT:CSD should apply.

Better ideas, in my opinion, are

• to create objective draftspace CSD D* criteria, compliant with Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Header (this replaces your PROD ideas);
• to give more power to qualified reviewers (specifically, I suggest a quorum of two qualified reviewers may decide, subjectively, to have it deleted immediately). Currently, AfC reviewers are listing quantities of crap at MfD due to their lack of power to respond to hopeless drafts tendentiously resubmitted.

I agree with sorting being the same as reviewing as "promising" (and categorized as such, and ineligible for G13), except that a draft should be able to be marked as promising even if the reviewer doesn't know how to sort it. Reviewed as "promising/unsorted", I guess. If I were reviewing old drafts, with the vast majority being hopeless, I would not want to be expected to sort the rare gem, forbidding me from identifying it unless I sorted it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:13, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I basically agree. I suppose it is probably a matter of how to secure the consensus for the implement. Should we do some RfC (or at least draft one, if you can excuse the pun here.) -- Taku (talk) 17:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe and TakuyaMurata: Agree, time for an RfC. A great shame for all this discussion to fade away into nothing. This draft space has come into being apparently without much clarity on how pages should enter into draft space, how they should be monitored and processed while there, and how and when they should be got rid of! How can I help?: Noyster (talk), 08:55, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Please see #Draft classifier below. -- Taku (talk) 03:48, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

And pinging Panyd as well, as having started this section: Noyster (talk), 08:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

To me, this appears to have been forked into two different things. I originally floated the idea of attracting content creators to draft space but I still don't have a concrete vision of how you'd do that. @SmokeyJoe:'s proposal definitely seems like a good idea in relation to all of the above discussions though - so I definitely think we should draft an RfC around that. In fact, I think that's the sort of thing that could actually go to the Village Pump as a new system that people outside of NPP/new rights/AfC could get their teeth into - and admins would need to be aware of it. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:31, 1 March 2017 (UTC)