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Draft classifier template revisited

In light of SmokeyJoe's proposal on the expansion of G13 to all drafts, which seems to be going to pass, I would like to propose the modified version of the draft classifier template (#RFC: The draft classifier template.) It's the same template but without the G13 column. That is, the template is something like

Since we have already run a RfC and there was a broad support (except on the G13 part), I want to see if there is any strong objection to the template. In practice, the notability column should be used in conjunction with G13: use G13 somehow judiciously if the notability column is yes. That is, since G13 is essentially applied without reviews (many good AfC-drafts get deleted just because they are 6 months old), we require that G13 be applied with "some review" if the notability column is yes. Since I'm not familiar with the minutiae of the deletion process, maybe someone can elaborate on "some review" here. -- Taku (talk) 00:16, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

• I suggest the classifier include an optional, non-default, G13-exempt, for pages that an experienced editor claims to have promise. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:56, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree in principle. We probably need some mechanism to prevent abuse, though. -- Taku (talk) 23:39, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
• See Stale Abstract mathematic Draft pages. The policy WP:NOTWEBHOST must prevail over an assertion that a topic is notable—if something is notable, a new article can be developed when someone is available to properly present the material. Johnuniq (talk) 09:52, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

The policy is really applicable to off-topic content (off-topic from the encyclopedic point of view); follow the link. The policy pages lists: 1. Personal web pages. 2. file storage, etc. So that policy doesn't really apply to drafts like math drafts cited above. -- Taku (talk) 23:27, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Uploading a page which might become an article is good, but keeping it indefinitely is not the purpose of Wikipedia. Consider a different topic. Would you support keeping forever a hundred drafts where each was a trivial mention of a character from pop culture? Wikipedia does not provide a web hosting service, so a draft must be developed or face deletion. Your reading of NOTWEBHOST is merely pointing out that clearly off-topic pages are deleted faster. Johnuniq (talk) 00:04, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

No I don't support hubdreads of such drafts; but I actually now see why you invoked the policy. You wrote "a draft must be developed or face deletion". This is just wrong (or I'm very temped to say fake!). No there is no such consensus and this draftspace page doesn't say a draft will be deleted unless it keeps developing steady. I believe what you wanted to say is that one should not abuse the draftspace. I see a genuine difference between drafts on tens of notable encyclopedia topics and hundreds of drafts on non-notable topics. Note a number here is important; if for example one editor had hundreds of drafts in the draftspace for no good reason, that might indicate. It's better to ask if which leads to more content in the end: having some tens of drafts on math topics or simply deleting them. -- Taku (talk) 20:27, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Please continue the discussion in #RfC: the clarification on the purpose of the draftspace below since we are getting off-topic. -- Taku (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Just a pointer that, unless there is a strong objection to the template for the next 2/3 days, I'm implementing the template. -- Taku (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose as an attempt for TakuyaMurata to legitimize their walled garden of micro-stub math articles remaining in Draft space in perpituity. Hasteur (talk) 22:33, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose per Hasteur and see below. Legacypac (talk) 05:02, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose as totally out of process. If the community decides on a speedy deletion criterion at a wide community venue, only a similarly wide discussion can create exceptions to that. A tiny discussion on this page without an RfC banner or wide advertisements doesn't qualify. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:01, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually we already have a RfC: running the same RfC seems a bit redundant. -- Taku (talk) 03:21, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

So you acknowledge you're forum shopping by creating another discussion on the same topic. Glad that's clear. Can we get a speedy close on this one? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 03:50, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, the background of this thread was that the circumstance is different: this time there is no G13 column because of the recent proposed expansion of G13. Since this was most controversial part of the RfC and it's now missing, I assumed there is not much opposition (except the above off-topic oppositions). I'm still waiting for legitimate oppositions. -- Taku (talk) 03:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps this is just hopeless but this (and the below) are not really about my drafts; I wanted to have some general discussion and work with the general mechanism. Apparently it's not working... -- Taku (talk) 03:13, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Another pointer: since the above opposes do not address the merits of the template per se, they will be discounted. -- Taku (talk) 03:20, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@TakuyaMurata: You as an involved individual do not get to argue that consensus is your way. If you push forward with this proposal short of a independent admin closing this, I will report you to the Administrators Noticeboard and seek appropriate restrictions to prevent you from attempting to subvert the purpose of Draft Space. Subsequent to that I will open a Administrators Noticeboard discussion to seek consensus to either compel you to fix your already existing stale drafts, irrevocably submit them to AFC and let them be judged by an independent part for inclusion into mainspace, or delete them with a ban preventing you from recreating them. It should have been well clear that your attempts are not being well recieved by the community. Hasteur (talk) 12:36, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Why does this have to be about me, not the template per se which was worked out with inputs from the other editors? I acknowledge I'm too involved so I'm not going to push it. But can we just discuss the template per se? -- Taku (talk) 23:12, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

We don't need to classify Drafts with a template. It's an extra step that only postpones G13 deletion of hopeless pages. Editor time is far better spend CSDing or MfDing stuff that needs to go immediately, reviewing pages in the AfD backlog so their creators can fix them, and checking through 6 month+ stale pages for things that can be fixed and promoted. Adding a template to tell the next experienced editor something they can see themselves immediately is a waste of time. If it's junk, pursue deletion. If it raw gold try to move it forward. Legacypac (talk) 13:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

But how do you determine whether a page is hopeless or not? There have been too many false positives (good drafts get deleted just because the writer left and so the drafts got old). The template, if correctly implemented, is supposed to streamline the review process and reduce the review times. I'm not pushing any particular implemention, but the sorting and classification, done right, should lead to less waste of time (done wrong, it doesn't work). -- Taku (talk) 18:55, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Comment: This template is in a lot of ways redundant to Template:Draft article, which is already in use. Template:Draft article cross checks Wikipedia for articles of the same name, categorizes drafts by subject and lets readers know when the draft was last edited. Instead of creating yet another template, I suggest we expand the use of the current one.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 19:25, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I for one still fail to see the point of the Draft template (please know I absolutely mean no offense). As discussed in #The consensus on the "draft article" template, my understanding is that the template can be used to indicate a page is a draft page when there is a possibility of confusion. Since a page in the draftspace contains "Draft:" in front of it, such a template is generally redundant; but of course can be useful for drafts in the user pages and I suppose it is fine to give an editor a convinent way to say a page is a draft.

In contrast, the classifier template, as the name suggests, is supposed to be applied eventually to all pages in the draftspace. The scope is very different, if there is some functionality overlap. -- Taku (talk) 21:42, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@TakuyaMurata: you know people are going to take offense at this so do the right thing and strike it. Hasteur (talk) 22:41, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

No, I think you're the one who is unnecessarily being combative. Here, we are merely arguing about the merits of each template: why do you so badly need to shutdown the discussion? -- Taku (talk) 22:55, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Because you keep arguing that "without objection, I would like to do this" when clearly there is objection. You keep disruptively claiming that there is no valid opposition, yet the Math Wikiproject has twice seen problems with your drafts and your "discussions" here have been significantly less than well recieved. I want to protect the Draft space as a whole, and if we have pages like yours in Draft space, it only gives fuel to those editors who think drastic measures should be taken. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel as a case where an admin used a liberal interpertation of WP:IAR to delete a bunch of pages because nothing prevented him from doing so. Hasteur (talk) 23:09, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

My impression with the math wikiproject is that they are not particularly interested in those math drafts: I have not seen strong desire for the deletion (but not much interest for keeping). Your second point is more interesting: I don't have background in this matter (I just edit stuff). What drastic measure are you talking about? Is it just your paranoia? It is news to me that the old drafts endanger the draftspace. -- Taku (talk) 23:35, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@TakuyaMurata: It's not for use just when there is a possibility of confusion but serves as a warning that the content therein may not be accurate or up to the same standards as an article. It can be used in any draft and is recommended though not required to be used in all drafts, which appears to be the aim of this template.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 23:50, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• I think the draft classifier as proposed is too complicated to be realistically expected to be widely applied. I prefer my old proposal of {{Hopepless}}, apply to draft talk page, don't postpone G13; or {{Promising draft}} at the top of the draft, which should serve to make the page G13 exempt, indefinitely but certainly for another 6 months. Anything judged to have possible long term interest should be moved to a WikiProject subpage, or into userspace. Taku's math drafts belong in his userspace. If he invited others to edit them, he should make a note on the top of each page saying so. His userspace has no space limitations, he has no reason for using draftspace for what are essentially his drafts. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:29, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, the template is supposed to consolidate different functionalities: so it's complex in the way a smartphone is complex. I think one of the main problems of the draftspace is that of the discoverability; a.k.a.. poor visibility. This template need not be only solution but is still a solution to this problem. To respond to "Anything judged to have possible long term interest should be moved to a WikiProject subpage, or into userspace. ", in other words, the draftspace must be a temporary storage; that's not my understanding. I believe the draftspace is (or at least was created as) a solution to the problems of hosting and preserving contents that we prefer not put in the mainspace for various reasons but still want to preserve someway: i.e., a sort of cold storage in Wikipedia. (Such a storage is consistent with WP:NOTWEBHOST since the policy asks for the removal of non-encyclopedic off-topic content.) For such a storage to function, there needs some inventory list. This template is supposed to help maintain such a list. -- Taku (talk) 21:38, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

On further thinking, I want to add the review column: so the template looks like

Here, the "internal review" should be set by an experienced editor other than a creator (obviously the creators have too much conflict of interest). It can be set promising, hopeless, pending, etc. I switched my vote to support on the G13 expansion since streamlining the deletion process is a progress. The question is not how but what to delete. -- Taku (talk) 22:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

proper use of draft space and labor

I am opening this section for a non-RFC discussion of Taku's concerns. I am a latecomer to this discussion, and I don't deal with drafts much, so my attempt at a starting summary may be faulty.

Here's the situation I understand it: There are tens of thousands of drafts. No one wants to delete useful drafts. No one wants to keep useless trash. There are all sort of things that we theoretically could or should do. But as I see it, the fundamental issue is labor. We can't do something if we literally don't have the person-hours to preform that labor. Another critical point is skilled labor. Draft space is used by experienced users, but we especially funnel new users there. We want experienced users doing the oversight work, and we especially want experienced users making the decisions about what gets deleted. We simply can't have multiple people expend a cumulative hour of expert-labor on each of the 20 drafts to review and categorize and preform heavyweight review-for-deletion processes. Even if we did have the people to do that work, we would be better off blindly bot-deleting every draft and just letting those trusted/skilled users spend those 20 hours building new articles themselves. People are particularly upset with the conflict over your drafts. I looked. They haven't been touched in over a year and a half or more. Some are substantial drafts, however you appear to have spammed a large number of one-edit one-sentence microstubs. When you apparently spend 2 minutes creating a page, people get upset that you appear to expect multiple other people to devote far larger amounts of their own time processing it and giving it a multi-user careful review before discarding it. If a page took two minutes to create, then it doesn't warrant more than two minutes of labor to delete.

There is currently an RFC in progress discussing rules for which drafts are eligible for a low-labor deletion process, and how it should work. It appears the consensus will be that any draft which has not been edited for 6 months is eligible. Yes, the community does have a soft-deadline where drafts are deemed "stale" and eligible for lightweight deletion processes. We do not permanently host non-articles. Any draft which has not been edited in 6 months has a low-likelihood of making it to mainspace. Anyone may evaluate whether the draft is useful. If they think it's junk, they can tag it CSD G13. Then an admin reviews it and decided whether or not to delete. There also appears to be significant support that deleted drafts may be restored on-request per REFUND.

Taku: If you have some question, comment, or proposal, I invite you to post it here. Please remember that any draft-management ideas won't work if they require more than minimal skilled/trusted labor expended on each draft. And please remember it is unproductive to use this page object-to or try to evade the proposed G13 process. Any concerns of that nature belong in that RFC discussion. If you have other thoughts, questions, or proposals, please post it here. Thanx. Alsee (talk) 11:29, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for opening a thread like this. I really do think discussion is more preferable than having local fights all over the places. You wrote "my attempt at a starting summary may be faulty." I'm afraid this is the case. No, this is not really about the matter of labor since almost all draft pages get little or no review at all. I think this is preferable. The vast majority of my contributions is to the mainspace (I have started quite a few mainspace articles). I specifically place pages to the draftspace that are incomplete or I don't want to see much scrutiny (e.g., I'm not completely certain about some technicality.) As I wrote, this dispute is about the proper use of the draftspace: some deletionist editors thought this use of the draftspace is a violation of WP:NOTWEBHOST; it is not since the policy is about off-topic content. You wrote the "community does have a soft-deadline". I agree it seems so; but that represents the change in the consensus and we need to properly document that (e.g., through RfC).

I have a concrete proposal: I think we need the policy "What the draftspace is not", just as we have "what Wikipedia is not". For example, apparently, many got upset by one-sentence drafts or a draft only with references. That was unintentional but is a consequence of the fact that we have differing views on what "the draftspace is not". Let's just work-out explicit inclusion criteria, can we? -- Taku (talk) 12:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Trying to argue about inclusion criteria is completely missing the point. The drafts you put forward are eligible for inclusion as long as the draft continues to make progress to mainspace. Even if you were to come back once every 3 months and make some progress on these drafts, we wouldn't care, beceause progress is being made. Your argument of "If I put this textbook definition out in draft space, someone in the future will be able to slingshot off that into a mainspace creation" is incredibly weak. If someone is coming to wikipedia to create a page on the subject, it is reasonable to assume that they'll already have the same textbook definition you have dumped in. Hasteur (talk) 12:37, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

But you are arguing about the inclusion criteria: "eligible for inclusion as long as the draft continues to ..." If this is not called the inclusion criteria, I don't know what it is. I get you might want to require a page to be edited every 3 month. But there is currently no such requirement; that requires the change in the consensus. Also, many of my draft pages have more than def. You don't have problems with them then; am I right? -- Taku (talk) 12:45, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Taku, the in-progress RFC is (potentially) establishing exactly that consensus. No one wants to delete drafts that look useful, but a draft that hasn't been edited in 6 months would be eligible for lightweight deletion.

Regarding your drafts, I think we all agree that some of them look useful. However I have a suggestion which may reduce some of the tensions. All pages are "owned" by the community, and expected to serve the main purpose of building the encyclopedia. Draft pages in particular are expected to have meaningful community-use-value. Go through all of your drafts. For each one, ask yourself whether there's enough useful content there that it qualifies as a significant partial-article, one which which notably reduces the work needed for someone else who was about to start that draft themselves. I'm referring to drafts containing useful REFs, significant useful structure, and/or substantial useful text beyond a definition. Something that the community wants to own, to significantly benefit the next random editor. For drafts below that threshold, just copy all of those the fragments onto a single page in your userspace. (I am assuming that you want to keep that, as a list of articles you were interested in possibly working on in the future.) Then request batch-deletion of the draft pages that have no significant value for community-use. Alsee (talk) 13:23, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Flip side is Taku can give their authorization to move these drafts (say that are at least 18 months old) to mainspace and let the sharks of mainspace go through the pages and give them an explicit thumbs up/thumbs down on the content and integrate the content as appropriate (including merging them into parent articles). And I am phrasing it this way because there have been previous consensus discussions that moving draft space pages to mainspace to make them eligible for the more strict inclusion criteria is gaming the system. If we have Taku's approval to do this (or to merge/redirect the content to the nearest related article/subsection) it will (in my mind) greatly reduce the precieved "stale" pages in draftspace that need something sone with them. Hasteur (talk) 13:35, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

If we, the community, were to adopt some kind of periodic-editing requirement, I can certainly follow that. (By the way, this is different from the G13 expansion.) Again, this is the matter of the inclusion criteria. As for Hasteur's suggestion, for me, that misses the purpose of the draftspace; I do move drafts to the mainspace all the time when they are ready and I leave those are not up to the mainspace standard here. My problem is the view that having old pages in the draftspace is somehow problematic. The consensus changes and if the consensus is not to allow old pages and only if then, we need to move them to the mainspace or do something. -- Taku (talk) 18:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• I think draftspace was a big mistake. Same as was the article incubator. It paves a pretty road for newcomers to write new pages without every becoming encultured to Wikipedia. It separates these newcomers from ordinary editors. Instead, I think newcomers should be directed to editing mainspace immediately. IF they have a new topic, include mentions of it in existing articles, and let that action bring them into contact with other editors and Wikipedia standards. That's a big IF. There are few missing topics that are not new topics, and new topics are written into mainspace by experienced editors. Newcomers and IPs add huge amounts of content, but this does not mean that good content is encouraged by directing newcomers to write pages in draftspace. WP:ACTRIAL has regained momentum. It's assumptions may be meaningfully tested. If born out, the same applies with equal logic to draftspace. Newcomers should not be encouraged to use thier first edits creating new pages, anywhere, including draftspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:24, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@Alsee: So, a little context. There is a page (User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report) that lists pages that are in the draft namespace that are not enrolled in the Articles for Creation process (as defined by having {{AfC submission}} on them) that have not been edited in at least 6 months. During the creation of Draft namespace there were discussions about non-AFC drafts and how should we sweep up the cicada creations (editor works on the page then goes away permanently (or reappears 3 years later). Now because of that, we have pages that may be covered by mainspace topics (as PoV forks, or rework drafts) that have significantly diverged from the topic. We could also have micro sentence fragments that link to other articles, but use thesaurus renames to make it sound different from the mainspace topic for which the mainspace could be expanded. We also have hopless Spam, Vanity posting, attacks, and many other things. Even if we were to spend 2 minutes sorting through each one of these stale drafts, that's still many editor weeks sunk into effectively useless content. G13 was developed for AFC under the argument that almost all pages that are eligible are either declined drafts (meaning an editor has reviewed the proposed article and found it wanting) or "Not ready yet" drafts because the author has elected to not submit the draft yet. In both of these cases the author is reminded at the outset that they have to make improvements to the page to keep it from being swept up by the low effort deletion policy. G13 doesn't make judgements on if the page has merit or if the page meets one of the other G-series CSD. It simply notes that it's and AfC submission that hasn't been edited in a 6 month period immeditely proceeding the G13 nomination. G13 also has one of the lowest bars to restoring the deleted content (pending an admin review to make sure it wouldn't meet annother CSD reason). If you come to Draft:Really Esoteric Topic and it had been deleted previously, you'll see the "This page was deleted previously, to request it back please use WP:REFUND" in the red box. Yes it requires you to know the name of the topic, but that's already a requirement if the page was already existing. How can you write about a topic if you don't know what it's called?

Now as to (what I precieve) the root cause of the Mathematics sub-stubs. We've asked Taku multiple times to go and make effort on the pages that have not been edited from 2014 that are in Draft space that read like copy-pastes from a graduate level mathematics textbook. Taku has argued that there is no reason why they should have to go back and fix these creations, so we go around and around arguing as to are these pages helping advance the purpose Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Hasteur (talk) 12:26, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I just want to clarify a few things. You wrote: "We've asked...". This is misleading. For example, the attitude from the math wikiproject is that it is not interested in the draft pages. If asked, they can give an opinion but they have not asked me to do anything about my draft pages (since they will deal when the drafts are moved to the mainspace.) Many editors have concerns about hopeless draft pages on non-notable topics. My drafts are not among them since they are about the notable topics and are of encyclopedic nature. So, "we" here, it seems, refer to those deletionist editors who have a problem seeing the old pages in the draft space. For the record, currently, there is no consensus that old pages need to be deleted. I agree we need to streamline the deletion process (and so I for one is supporting the expansion of G13 to all drafts). But I still don't see a need to delete old pages only because they are old. -- Taku (talk) 19:04, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

It seems what is needed is an RfC on "what the draftspace is not". Some explicit rules on what is allowed to exist in the draftspace should really help to avoid having this type of repeated discussion. -- Taku (talk) 19:11, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Ok... how about this for the first bullet point in what draftspace is not - Draftspace is not a permanent holding pen for material that the community deams unlikely to be improved upon, and thus unlikely to be promoted into mainspace. Blueboar (talk) 22:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• Not a permanent shadow encyclopedia of topics that fail WP:N or [WP:V]] Legacypac (talk) 00:04, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

What draftspace is not

Per multiple suggestions above to address the subject, I have added a new What draftspace is not^{permalink to suggested addition} section. I invite people to endorse, expand, or criticize the addition. Alsee (talk) 15:51, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you meant by the second bullet point? I'm not understanding what you wrote. Thanks.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 15:56, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict with the reply below)

TriiipleThreat, I mean a page with trivial or zero useful content. If the page is abandoned, and three years later someone else wants to build a draft on that topic, will the new author significantly benefit if we retained the draft?

I'll give examples, all abandoned for over a year and a half, roughly in order of increasing value:

• MFD on Draft:Cotensor_product was a 6-0 unanimous delete, apparently because it contained nothing but a sentence fragment.
• Draft:Nakano's_vanishing_theorem Zero refs. One sentence, presumably trivial for anyone knowledgeable enough to write that article.
• Draft:Sheaf_of_spectra Zero refs, two lines.
• Draft:Toroidal_embedding One sentence, and basically a link to a forum post.
• Draft:Macaulay_representation_of_an_integer A useless fragment of a sentence. One ref. Theoretically the ref could have some value for a new author, but that is seriously thin for community-owned-content being preserved on the remote chance someone might use it. I'm sure this would die at MFD. The point of the currently active CSD G13 RFC is that we don't want to waste the time of several editors running an MFD.

There are other drafts in this batch, some of which have only marginally more content.

The general idea is that draftspace is for actively developing a page towards mainspace. We may retain stale drafts if we see reasonable value and reasonably hope that the stale draft may be usefully adopted by a future author. Alsee (talk) 21:40, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Alsee, I've removed the section entirely, as it's in direct contradiction with the WP: Imperfect policy: Collaborative editing means that incomplete or poorly written first drafts can evolve over time into excellent articles. Even poor articles, if they can be improved, are welcome. BTW, I fail to see why you would like to have for drafts some deletion criteria which are way more strict than what we have for stubs in main space? Drafts are much less visible overall. Diego (talk) 21:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Diego, WP:Drafts is an information page, not a new deletion policy page. It was an attempt to describe that draft space is for actively building articles, and describe that we (hopefully) won't G13 or MFD delete abandoned drafts containing content reasonably useful to preserve for a future author. Also, see the edit-conflict comment I posed above. Alsee (talk) 21:51, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

(The statement: I'm quite busy with real-life stuff at this moment and so I cannot actively participate in this discussion. Also, since I have too much conflict of interest in this matter, it's probably better excuse myself from the discussion. I have zero problem if the community draws a bright line and wants to delete content crossing the line. My only problem is an attempt for the deletion of legitimate content. Some deletionists and I simply differ on what is legitimate. -- Taku (talk) 23:17, 8 August 2017 (UTC))

I kind of regret putting the above statement, which had an unintended dumping effect. So, I'm putting forth my position: the draftspace was created as a space to host AfC pages as well as non-AfC draft pages that are previously hosted in the user space. This is why there is no deadline for pages in the draftspace (since there is no deadline for userpage drafts.) So @Alsee:'s "It was an attempt to describe that draft space is for actively building articles" represents the change in the consensus. I still think what is needed an RfC to test the view whether the draftspace must be a space reserved for actively edited pages or not. If the former is the case, maybe we need a new namespace "coldstorage" or something to preserve some content we don't want to keep but, to appease the deletionists, we don't want to put in the draftspace. (Again, I personally don't subscribe to the view the pages in the draftspace need to be actively edited. I mean why? except to make the deletionists happy) -- Taku (talk) 00:19, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

We already have what you talk about, it's called USERSPACE. It's not deletionist to want effort focused to things that are viable. Really Taku, your mudslinging is conduct unbecoming. Hasteur (talk) 03:38, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

@Hasteur: You misunderstood me; my point was that the draftspace has that feature, namely to host encyclopedic content that was not necessary being actively edited. Again, the draftspace is preferable since it's not tied to any particular user; so for example, when a user left the other editors can pick up what is left. Do you agree we need such a space or not? -- Taku (talk) 13:39, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

The first point seems like an uncontroversial restatement of WP:NOTWEBHOST to me, but yes perhaps worth repeating here. I'm also having trouble understanding the second point but your examples here seem to suggest it's directed at a small number of drafts created by a single editor (TakuyaMurata) and not a widespread or recurring misuse of draftspace. I think it would be better to try and resolve that issue with Taku directly rather than modifying this information page. – Joe (talk) 07:46, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I disagree: WP:NOTWEBHOST is about non-encyclopedic content; there has been a wide spread misunderstanding that that policy page says that the old abandoned draftpages need to be deleted. I agree we should update this information page to document this wrong usage. Again, as I keep saying, the issue stems from the fact we don't have an agreement on whether inactive drafts need to be deleted. It's a general question that needs to be addressed for example by an RfC. If there is no opposition, I want to start an RfC on inactively-edited draft pages. Let's try to have a clear answer on this question. -- Taku (talk) 13:35, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: It's not just TakuyaMurata. Other editors have also been poked at (see User_talk:Captain_Assassin!) and they have been willing to work with the community to do what is best. Takuya wants to keep these pages so we have to have these pedantic debates where Taku tries to carve out an exception to keep their walled gardens. Taku is being called to task because he created numerous pages over 2 years ago and never came back and to improve them. Even last year when it was noticed, Taku was asked to go through and try improving them. Hasteur (talk) 14:36, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

What I'm proposing to put in the record on whether that usage is correct or not. I get you think my usage is misuse; I don't. Since your view nor mine need to equal to the community's view, we need an RfC: the question should be yes/no: the draftspace must be reserved for actively edited pages. I think the RfC like this should be a good compromise. What do you think? (If the community decides the answer is yes, I have no problem moving some old drafts to my user page.) -- Taku (talk) 15:03, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

On every AfC Draft the box says "There are no deadlines as long as you are actively improving the submission. Drafts not being improved may be deleted after six months." There is solid concensus to extend that same rule to non-AfC drafts too. Legacypac (talk) 19:11, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I disagree; where can you find the consensus that this also applies to non-AfC drafts as well? If so, this information page needs to be updated. Assuming, for now, the lack of evidence of such a consensus is the absence of the consensus, is there any objection to run an RfC like this? RfCs are more definitive than keep speculating on hypothetical consensuses. -- Taku (talk) 07:06, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Taku, I do not understand why I need to remind you that there is already an RFC on exactly that issue: WT:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Expand_G13_to_cover_ALL_old_drafts. You already participated in that RFC. It's almost ready to close. I have not participated there, and I have only skimmed the responses, but it looks like 6-month-stale drafts will be eligible for speedy deletion. Maybe I'm missing something here, but as far as I can see you don't have any point here that doesn't amount to trying to disregard that RFC. If I am indeed missing something here, please clarify what your desired RFC topic is. Alsee (talk) 23:45, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

@Alsee:, I'm afraid you misunderstood the RfC. The RfC is about streamlining the deletion process. If it passes, we will be able to use G13 to delete pages that are previously deleted through MfDs. Legitimate over-6-month-old draft pages will still not be deleted. If a draft page is old but otherwise non-problematic, we simply don't apply G13 to it. If we automatically delete all old pages, then we don't need G13 (since no request is needed). It's important to distinguish this matter from G13; the former is about what to delete, while the latter is about how. I very strongly prefer to have some explicit rules what is allowed in the draftspace and what is not. Having such a rule should save a lot of time for everyone involved. -- Taku (talk) 04:56, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@Alsee: with respect: The RFC suggests extending G13 to non-AFC draft pages that are over 6 months. There are some discussions as to how to evaluate the eligibility. My personal viewpoint is that there is a difference of being eligible for G13, being nominated for G13 by an editor (who presumably has some critical thinking skills), and being nominated by a robotic (bot) process. Some of the pages that certain editors here wish to save are beyond comprehension as to their viability, others are 99% mainspace viable pages. In the robot case (which I do have experience with) I would rather have pages that have been looked over at least once by a experienced editor who can help determine the viability of the page. If they don't think it's viable they can mark the draft with a "hopeless draft" like template that indicates that they do not see any future. At that point the bot's processes will be engaged to first warn the page's author at 5 months that their page is aging and could be nominated for G13 if not edited soon and subsequently nominated for G13 if the page does become eligible under the conservatively defined regime. So at minimum the page's author has 1 month where they're put on notice that the page could be deleted in the near future, and 5 months before that to resolve the "hopeless draft" state. Hasteur (talk) 12:06, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I think it's worth noting that as of today the RfC has expired, and no consensus was found to extend G13 to all drafts. Which was to be expected, since G13 was created specifically for AfC, which is inherently a transient process; while there is content in draft space without this transient character, such as pages moved from main space through AfDs, for which imposing a time limit does not make sense.

So at minimum the page's author has 1 month where they're put on notice that the page could be deleted in the near future As Taku explained above, the primary difference of Draftspace and User space is that the first is shared and belongs to the community at whole, with anyone allowed to adopt it and use it as you see fit; it's unreasonable to expect the author to be the one doing the improvements, as they don't own the page, and there's always the potential for things in draft space for someone else to find them and use them in some existing article or a new one. Whether a draft is "hopeless" or not should be defined by the quality and nature of its content, not whether it has attracted sustained attention in some arbitrary period of time. The big advantages of retaining content which may be "beyond comprehension as to their viability" is that you don't need to assess them in a timely manner to differentiate them from those which are mainspace viable; and that the responsibility to assess them for validity doesn't fall to a single editor, but to any one who happens to access the page and see if they can use them. Diego (talk) 12:53, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Correction - Consensus to extend G13 to all of Draftspace was very clear and enacted. Legacypac (talk) 22:21, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Correction the G13 expansion doesn't disallow the usage mentioned by Diego Moya; at least there is no consensus (only the consensus for the expansion). -- Taku (talk) 23:08, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13" is outdated

I have reverted the bold change that constitutes deliberately misleading advice contained in these revisions. I do not believe that the page and its instructions are outdated. I further believe that if the instructions were outdated the best solution would be to fix the instructions. As the editor I revered is one that I have had significant disagreemets with previously I am bringing the discussion to determine if there is consensus. Hasteur (talk) 20:34, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I further note that Taku has decided to revert again in violation of WP:BRD. Taku knows better so I am not extending any good faith. Hasteur (talk) 20:36, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't meant to be misleading but be informative since if you follow the link, you reach the instructions that need updates. The update can be tricky so the quicker solution is to inform the page is dated. -- Taku (talk) 20:45, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

But your shading to indicate that it shouldn't be used is deliberately deceptive (and yes I am intending it with that exact connotation). Wouldn't the better to fix the text instead of casting Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt? How about fixing the problem instead of trying to dillute existing practices? Hasteur (talk) 00:59, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not seeing issues with the linked instruction page, which I updated some time ago. After another look, I tightened some wording. If some wants to change another page, use that talkpage. Legacypac (talk) 01:02, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I think I missed the update (sorry). But the update was incomplete since, for instance, the talk of "your draft" is problematic especially for non-AfC drafts since the drafts do not belong to the creator. -- Taku (talk) 02:24, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I wish to register that now Taku is Edit warring trying to change the meaning on that info page. Just moving the disruption from one place to annother... Hasteur (talk) 02:25, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Face-palm! Taku before you post changes to pages please check the history of the page you are concerned about. Legacypac (talk) 04:59, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

True but sometimes you assume the page is the same as before (I think we sorted out the confusion.) -- Taku (talk) 07:47, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Actually you modified the page to remove any concept that the REFUND needs to be "because the requester intends to work on it." and any idea that draft space is not for indefinate hosting. This is an attempt by Taku to change instructions to support his disruption. Legacypac (talk) 16:10, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Nothing changed since there is no such intentionality requirement; for example, one can request an REFUND to move it to the mainspace. Also, as far as I understand, WP:DEADLINE applies to the draftspace. -- Taku (talk) 03:45, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:G13 also applies to Draft space. There is nothing more to debate. Legacypac (talk) 18:25, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Brainstorming on an RfC

Turtles all the way down. Let's move on.

Hi all, In [1], @Legacypac: suggested an RfC to have more explicit rules on what type of a page can/should belong to the draftspace. I like the idea very much; in fact, I have already tried that twice above. Since it was pointed out that these RfCs are too disorganized, I wonder if we can come up with something more structured. -- Taku (talk) 03:39, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Specifically, I think we should ask Does a page in the draftspace need to be being actively worked on? If this is the case, we cannot move, for example, a page in the mainspace to the draftspace that has some potential but is not up to the quality (say establishing the notability) required for the mainspace. Put in another way, does the draftspace support some sort of an archiving feature? Answering these questions should save us (in particular me!!) from having a lot of disputes. -- Taku (talk) 03:56, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Yes it needs to be actively worked on see WP:G13. Yes we can move pages from Mainspace to Draft space - your logic is lacking there. See WP:Userfy which directly addresses that process. No idea what an archiving feature you refer to is. Legacypac (talk) 05:26, 17 September 2017 (UTC) I should have mentioned: this is unrelated to G13, which is a quick method to delete an old draft if one wants. In other words, it is just a procedure not a policy. The question is whether/when we want to do that; and I don't see any consensus on that. By the "archiving feature", I mean, for example, whether a draft that is abandoned in the everyday sense needs to be deleted or not (abandoned truly in the sense that an editor has left). -- Taku (talk) 07:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Ah, is your respasoning: "an old draft needs to be deleted because of G13" and "we need to apply G13 because an old draft needs to be deleted"? Obviously, that's not an argument :) G13 is obviously useful in many instances but it still leaves the question whether the draftspace is allowed to host some useful drafts that are not actively edited for time being. And the question needs to be answered by the community. -- Taku (talk) 07:44, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Taku, your attempts to combat the G13 consensus are tendentious. There is NO QUESTION that we want to allow anyone to tag an eligible page. No one is required to do it. If you don't want to do it, then don't do it. Regarding "archiving feature", you may archive the page in Draft for at least six months. Beyond six months it will remain "archived" indefinitely - or until the first person decides to G13 it. Whichever comes first. Regarding "actively worked on", G13 effectively defines what that means. There is an abundant six month window for anyone to work on it. If no one does, then it is eligible for G13. None of those questions need to be answered by the communit, because they were already answered. Alsee (talk) 07:49, 17 September 2017 (UTC) I'm not debating whether the G13 applies to all pagess in the draftspace. To repeat, the question is whether WP:DEADLINE applies to the draftspace or not; that is, whether we want to require a page in the draftspace to be being actively worked on or not. User:Legacypac seems to imply the answer is yes. But G13 is a mere procedure and, as I understand, it cannot answer this question. For example, in MfDs, one sometimes sees an argument that the draftspace is not allowed to host inactive drafts. G13 does not support this argument since it is not a policy (so it's just one editor's opinion). Is G13 a policy? Some editors believe long-term drafts belong to the userspace; again G13 does not address this. It is useful to determine the community's position on these matters. -- Taku (talk) 12:57, 17 September 2017 (UTC) WP:G13 is part of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, which is certainly a policy, and enables (does not require) deletion of a draft that has not been edited for six months. I cannot see why this criterion, introduced only last month, needs to be re-discussed at the present time. A draft can be preserved for six months by making any sort of improvement to it, or indefinitely by adding {{Promising draft}}: Noyster (talk), 14:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Sorry, that's not what I meant and again I'm NOT suggesting we re-discuss the G13 expansion. I meant to ask: Is G13 a policy regrading the use of the draftspace? There are some editors (namely User:Legacypac) who cite G13 as a reason that the draftspace is not allowed to host inactive drafts. Is this correct? If so (and I don't think it is), this project page needs to be uploaded to explicitly mention this policy. If not (which I think is the case), again it is useful to explicitly mention that the inactive drafts can belong to the draftspace. -- Taku (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Taku Is G13 a policy regrading the use of the draftspace? The page WP:CSD clearly states at the top that it is a POLICY PAGE. Section WP:G13 of that page explicitly applies to draft pages. So the answer is YES, G13 IS POLICY ON DRAFT PAGE USAGE AND MANAGEMENT. If you keep this up you're going to get topic banned. And based on discussions I saw elsewhere, I believe there is support to explicitly include MFDs-on-drafts in that topicban. Alsee (talk) 20:40, 17 September 2017 (UTC) (Perhaps I misunderstood CSD but I didn't think CSD can be used as an inclusion criterion; for example, the notability is used as an inclusion criterion in the mainspace not CSD. But I shut up.) -- Taku (talk) 20:52, 17 September 2017 (UTC) I urgently recommend an uninvolved user shut down this "It depends on what the defenition of 'is' is" debate. Again TakuyaMurata tries to re-litigate and insert loopholes to allow them to retain in the Draft namespace, indefinitely, pages that they may one day come back and edit (or not). Some stripe of Ownership/Creation credit land grabbing/Idea mining/etc seems to motivate him and so we have to fight over every single millimeter of ground in order to move forward with orderly. CSD:G13 applies to Draft namespace, period, end of line, no further discussion/debate/modification needed. While G13 is applicable to draft namespace, all it takes is one single substantial edit to give the page an extension from G13 eligibility. If and when the page becomes eligible for G13, a reviewing editor can look at the page to determine if the page has hope or if it needs to be nominated for G13. It then has to go to an admin who has the option of enacting the deletion or declining. The admin has discretion to agree with the nomination or not. There are multiple opportunities to go wave off and go around again in 6 months before the deletion. Strongly advise TakuyaMurata to stop this disruptive loophole creating and actually work on fixing pages that he created that could be subject to G13. Hasteur (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Can we discuss policies instead of behaviors? Anyway, I can agree to wait for inputs from the other users. For the record, my position is that G13 doesn't answer the question: "is a page in the draftspace required to be being actively worked on". If I understand correct, some think the answer is yes; some others no. -- Taku (talk) 20:48, 17 September 2017 (UTC) @TakuyaMurata: G13 can be the consequence of the page not being worked on in 6 months. Period. Stop. End of Line. FINAL. If you want to argue that G13 does not apply to Draft space be prepared to climb a vertical wall with many people explicitly calling for your topic banning on any question regarding maintenance of draft space or any MFD for which any part of the question is regarding the lack of editing for the draft. Hasteur (talk) 20:52, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Do you understand English? Perhaps I don't. I was asking if G13 is a requirement that a page in the draftspace must be actively worked on. -- Taku (talk) 20:58, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Perhaps someone here does have difficultly understanding English. No one is required to work on anything. However any draft which has not been worked on for 6 months is eligible for G13-deletion. Alsee (talk) 21:47, 17 September 2017 (UTC) No one is required to work on any Draft. G13 does not require anyone to work on a draft. G13 allows a Draft to be tagged for deletion if no one has decided to work on it for 6 months. It then allows the Draft to be deleted. The policy also allows a fairly easy restoration of the deleted draft if someone asks for it. ~ GB fan 22:17, 17 September 2017 (UTC) That's what I thought. So the answer to the question at the beginning of the thread is no, I think. -- Taku (talk) 22:28, 17 September 2017 (UTC) No, you asked Does a page in the draftspace need to be being actively worked on?. What you didn't write, but have heavily implied in all of your follow ups is Does Draftspace require pages to be worked on in order to avoid CSD:G13? which each user has told you, Per CSD:G13, a page can be nominated for deletion (or deleted outright) after 6 months of no editing. Hasteur (talk) 22:34, 17 September 2017 (UTC) When you edit this talkpage it says: "This is the talk page of an information page, meant to accurately reflect a consensus established by one or more policies or guidelines, or other Wikipedia processes and practices. This information page is not a policy or guideline itself. Consensus on policies and guidelines are established on the talk pages of those policies or guidelines, not here. Please use this talk page to discuss issues specific to this information page—issues related to the consensus described here should be raised on the talk page of the associated policy or guideline" Taku needs to follow these instructions, and please don't try and change those instructions too. Legacypac (talk) 22:50, 17 September 2017 (UTC) I'm not debating on G13-eligibility but saying that we need to find out the community's view on what type of pages we want in the draftspace; besides the non-requirement on notability, whether the community prefers to require the pages in the draftspace to be actively worked on or not. So far, I got two answers to this question, yes and no; i.e., the view is divided. Also, I'm not proposing that we change anything. -- Taku (talk) 22:53, 17 September 2017 (UTC) No, views are not divided. Pages need to be worked on to avoid deletion. Alsee (talk) 23:05, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Again, I'm not debating on the G13-eligibility. Let me put this way: currently this information page does not say "a page needs to be being actively edited" or something along the line. My understanding is this is because that some editors including me believe the draftspace can be used to host an inactive draft. G13 is useful to clean-up a lot of craps; that's why I supported the expansion. But this information page is still not so clear on what type of drafts can/should belong to the draftspace, because the view is divided. This is not completely unrelated to G13 but is a different question. -- Taku (talk) 23:17, 17 September 2017 (UTC) I'm not aware of any (other) editors who think draft space can be used to host an inactive draft (except in the narrow sense that it might last for six months or until someone nominates it for deletion). You claim to believe that it can be used to host an inactive draft. Why do you think this?--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:32, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Because this information page doesn't explicitly say so (it shouldn't). "An inactive draft may be deleted" doesn't mean it must be or should be deleted. Specifically, admins may/should decline the G13 nomination when the draft page is useful. In other words, it is different from saying "a page in the draftspace must be being actively edited." I believe we do want to preserve some inactive but useful drafts. The userspace is not a good place to host such inactive drafts when the user left Wikipedia. We definitely don't want to put them in the mainspace. For me and for many others, the draftspace is the natural solution. -- Taku (talk) 23:46, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Who answered that pages don't have to be actively worked on to avoid deletion? ~ GB fan 23:53, 17 September 2017 (UTC) There is no "to avoid deletion" in the original question. Putting that changes the meaning of the question. -- Taku (talk) 23:57, 17 September 2017 (UTC) OK, If you are not concerned with deletion, I don't understand what the concern is here. There is no requirement for any page to be actively worked on anywhere in Wikipedia. The draft namespace is unique in that if the page isn't actively worked on it can be deleted. So the only consequence of no active editing on draft pages is the possibility of deletion. ~ GB fan 00:54, 18 September 2017 (UTC) Good. The concern here is that some editors (e.g., User:Legacypac above) believes in such a requirement, So, either (1) the community believes in such an editing requirement or (2) it doesn't or (3) the views are divided or (4) it is unclear which of (1), (2) or (3) is the case. My position is (4). -- Taku (talk) 01:01, 18 September 2017 (UTC) Legacypac uses G13 when saying Drafts must be actively worked on. That is to avoid deletion but you are not concerned with deletion so that opinion means nothing the way you have framed the question. I agree with that statement in that to avoid deletion actively working on a draft is required but again that is not what you are asking. ~ GB fan 01:25, 18 September 2017 (UTC) If the question is "do we force anyone to work on drafts" - of course not. If you take that truth and extend it to "we should not delete notes in draft space we should somehow know Taku wants but is not working on for 2 years" the answer is - see G13. We will delete them. In fact 5 days back we finished deleting every single non-afc draft that has been stale for more than 6 months. That excludes of course pages postponed in some way.

Can we discuss the word "stored"?

The opening sentence of this information page says:

Drafts are administration pages in the Draft namespace where new articles may be stored. (Emphasis added.)

I'd like to focus on the final word. I am not interested in reprising the close-to-incomprehensible issues raised in the previous section now thankfully hatted. However, I do think the current wording has the potential to mislead and can be easily solved.

In preparation for this post, I walk through the development of this page edit by edit. I won't rehash the entire history but I'll note that the concept was first implemented in December 2013, and early in 2014 there were some edits indicating that G 13 applied to pages in draft space. That language was alternately in and out for a period of time and then left out in favor of kicking the can down the road.

We get tired of kicking the can down the road and finally made the decision that yes, G 13 does apply to drafts. Prior to that decision, one can make an argument that, other than removal for good reasons such as moving to mainspace or not so good reason such as identification of copyright violations, drafts might languish forever. Obviously, this is a bit of an over simplification, as there have been attempts to MFD drafts — however, now that the community has accepted that G 13 applies to drafts, which I interpreted as meaning that pages can stay in draft space until such time as someone notices a six month pause in editing, in which case they can be deleted (and they can be deleted for that reason alone).

A lot of words to say that the word "stored" will connote, to some, unlimited storage time and that is inconsistent with the recent decision regarding G 13.

One easy solution is to replace "stored" with "temporarily stored" and optionally include some language about the six-month deadline. I suspect we'll need a little more wordsmithing than that but let me start with that as a proposal.

I did not miss that the instructions do include discussion of G 13. However, I will note the reality that not all editors especially new editors, will read the entire contents. While we can hold them to that standard it is a good practice to write an instruction of the form:

The rules allow X
.
.
.
lots of intermediate text
.
.
.
By the way, we didn't really mean "X" we really meant not "X"--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:59, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Single response unless directly asked a question: I support changing the word to something to the effect of "may be stored subject to the current procedures and consensus regarding the namespace" as a future proofing soution. This gives us the leeway to not have to change this every few years because of changes in the accepted consensus (i.e. having to enact 5~6 paralell changes because of one RFC closing). We can wikilink to a section defining what that means, but it makes the system a lot easier to explain and notate all the exceptions to the rules. Hasteur (talk) 19:04, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I completely agree that the wording is highly misleading given the current way drafts are currently processed at MfD and per G13. Consensus is seems to be that, far from being the purpose of draftspace, "storage" is actually disallowed. WP:NOTWEBHOST is very frequently cited, and usually accepted, in support of this position. While I very much disagree with this new consensus (see WP:NODRAFT), it is essential that this page provide accurate guidance to those seeking to develop articles in order to reduce biting, so I have gone ahead and BOLDly edited the first sentence to reflect my perception of current consensus, in line with your concerns. A2soup (talk) 19:10, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of your change, it seems to imply that articles in mainspace are finished, contrary to WP:NOTFINISHED. May I suggest "where new articles may be created and developed" instead? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:19, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Of course! Bold changes deserve bold revision. A2soup (talk) 19:25, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

+1. "Developed" was the word I was going to suggest. VQuakr (talk) 19:46, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

• Developed is very good. It goes with the idea we are here to build an encyclopedia not archive/store garbage indefinitely in Draftspace. Legacypac (talk) 20:26, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I can get behind "created and developed". While that doesn't carry the connotation of "temporary" that wasn't strictly needed; I simply wanted to avoid the possible inference of permanence associated with the word "stored".--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:32, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Recent changes by User:Legacypac

I have reverted some of recent changes by User:Legacypac, which I don't think have the community support; e.g., "test page" to refer to a short draft. -- Taku (talk) 23:20, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

• Diff for reference. All these seem reasonable to me as helpful; remember this is an info page and not policy. I do think the addition of "and deleted" in the last section is unnecessary verbage, so support changed version with the exception of those two words. I don't see anything about a "short page" in the diff; "no meaningful content" is not synonymous. VQuakr (talk) 23:32, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

G2 is not being expanded with my wording. Actual practice is to G2 delete draft pages that are blank or only repeat the title or otherwise have no evidently useful content. The addition of "and deleted" is to counter Taku's change that he will likely use to say pages should not be actually deleted G13. I'm fine going back to just "deleted". Legacypac (talk) 01:33, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

• • I think the changes look generally problematic. For instance, G13 applies to old drafts; that's more accurate. If we "abandoned", those unfamiliar with G13 may get the idea old drafts of an active editor may bw not abandoned (like I did). Better to use the accurate word. Similar to G2; it doesn't apply to "non-meaningful content" but only to edit-tesing pages. Again better to be precise. I'm aware of the G2 expansion in practice, which is unauthorized (see DVR Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 July 2) -- Taku (talk) 01:36, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

@TakuyaMurata and Legacypac: Would both of you please stop edit warring over the definition. I'd ask both of you to start securing a consensus going forward as every active editor here has an axe to grind. Taku, if you don't like Legacypac's changes, explain why you have a problem with them. Legacypac, Some of that language is on the razor edge of not being supported by consensus. Further reversion warring will result in me asking an Administrator for indefinite semi protection to prevent both of you boneheads from disrupting the stability of the page. Hasteur (talk) 01:41, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes I should have explained why the changes are wrong; starting this thread and my explanation is enough? -- Taku (talk) 01:48, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I've restored back to the 06:37, 31 August 2017 version by VQuakr. TakuyaMurata would you like to put your propsed language out or would you like to hear Legacypac's version first. LP, same question, reversed. Hasteur (talk) 01:50, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy with the old version. -- Taku (talk) 01:52, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

than Taku should not have made the first change.

I believe my suggested changes simply and accurately reflect actual policy and practice. I have no agenda to promote or pages I'm trying to protect, only wish to see this page accurately reflect actual practice. I'm being wholesale reverted, and I know exactly why. I made them one by one in case someone objected to one, but found them all reversed wholesale. I'll detail my reasoning more extensively than I did in the edit summaries. Legacypac (talk) 01:56, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

True but I didn't think the changes like removing AfC was controversial (not merely an update). -- Taku (talk) 02:08, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Blank or contentless

There are quite a few reasons drafts my be speedy deleted. I've added another that is common now - many examples in User:Legacypac/CSD_log or whereever the logs of accepted G2 are kept. [2]. Legacypac (talk) 02:02, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I think my problem is the wording of G2: it says it applies to editing-testing pages, not necessarily about the content. -- Taku (talk) 02:07, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

like in law, the meaning of words can change over time. An abandoned page with nothing but a title is at best a test of the save button. Legacypac (talk) 02:11, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I can see how G2 might apply, in that case, but I wonder if that usage is trying to be a stand in for CSD:A1 "No Context" This applies to articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. I can't find a recent discussion that seems to support this view, and can find one recent discussion (July of this year) where this usage was at best "no consensus". How about the following text: The general section of the criteria for speedy deletion may be applied to drafts. Drafts that are copyright violations, vandalism, BLP violations, or blatant advertising or promotion will be speedily deleted without consideration of the draft's age or last edit. No special deletion policy for drafts has been decided. Drafts with no meaningful content are often deleted as G2 Test pages. Draft pages that are at least 6 months from their last non-bot edit may be speedy deleted as described in the "Deletion of old drafts" section Does this work for both of you. Hasteur (talk) 02:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes with the change: may be speedy-deleted -> may be nominated for speedy deletion. -- Taku (talk) 02:35, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

No need to rephrase something right below. G2 is not a stand in for A1 which covers even paragraphs of text with no context. I don't use A1 though, as I rarely see anything at NPP that would fit it. I can live without changing this section. Legacypac (talk) 02:48, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

G2 currently functions for Draft space much like WP:A3 in mainspace and WP:G6 blank draft does for userspace. Legacypac (talk) 03:00, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

And that's wrong, no? -- Taku (talk) 04:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

MfD

I've long believed the wording here does not properly reflect the nuanced responses to the linked RfC. My proposed wording more accurately reflects actual practice across the hundreds of recent MfDs I've participated in. It also says why we don't apply N etc immediately. [3]. Legacypac (talk) 02:09, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

• That reason is not the reason, it even misunderstands WP:N. WP:N considers all sources that exist, not just sources included in the article. The biggest reason is the sheer impracticable of doing a WP:N evaluation on large numbers of sub-stubs. A demonstration of the failure is in the history of WP:N/N. Also, WP:N doesn't speak to possibilities of mergers, and many sub-stubs can be merged. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:23, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
• If I understand correctly, what you're trying to get across in this section is that thresholds normally applied to Main/Article namespace aren't to be applied as quickly/rigorously to Draft namespace pages, as long as there is progress being made on getting the page to where it can pass the thresholds. Right? Hasteur (talk) 02:27, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
• My problem was "give the users an opportunity..." This sounds like the users are not the part of the community. We're not giving some privileges for people to edit Wikipedia. Wikipedia belongs to people (unsigned by Taku)

For example - "Billy and Bob formed a band in middle school. It was awesome because they get they got to play at Sally's party." Now nearly every editor is going to apply WP:N and WP:OVERCOME to that page when it hits MfD, but we would not nominate it on day one to give the editor a few days to show they are not writing about a truly notable band. Ultimately many MfDs come down to a discussion of quality of sources and the potential for the subject to pass notability. Legacypac (talk) 02:41, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Adding "immediately" to MfD section has nothing to do with G13 expansion. Legacypac (talk) 12:35, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted the latest bold edit by Legacypac, as it still doesn't have consensus, and it contradicts the latest part of the first paragraph which explicitly says " Drafts may be nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion, but not on a primary concern of notability". Notability is never applied to drafts, per the result of the linked RfC, not only "not immediately".

@Hasteur:, you've reverted my getting back to the statu quo ante saying that there's consensus for such change, but there's no agreement regarding the term "immediately" in this current discussion; and a local consensus may not modify the result of the previous RfC anyway. Diego (talk) 12:36, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

@Diego Moya: the issue was up for discussion in this section and it's pretty clear that there is consensus and it's also pretty clear you didn't consider the page first, so ergo Boldly you removed the content, I reverted, and now you get to try and secure consensus. Have a nice day. Hasteur (talk) 12:40, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Diego Moya you are wrong twice now. Your first revert reference G13 expansion which has zero to do with the MfD section. Your second revert [4] says the word "immediately" was not discussed, but if you look to the top of this section that exact word was the basis of this whole discussion. Finally if you are reading the linked MfD you will find consensus (but not the close) is a heck of a lot closer to my wording. We should expect better than reverting users with very incorrect rational based on failure to read talk. Legacypac (talk) 12:44, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I have read the discussion prior to writing. I've seen that you are the only who defended the term "immediately"; nobody agreed to it nor mentioned it before me, and I saw SmokeyJoe disagreeing with your reason for the change; despite this, Hasteur said that there was consensus for that change, to which I disagree. I utterly disagree that the linked RfC, in which I participated, is closer to your wording; "notability guidelines do not apply to userspace and draftspace drafts" means to me that Notability is NOT a criterion to delete Drafts, ever. Diego (talk) 12:56, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I'd urge you to read the votes carefully, not just the headline. You will find the reasoned votes were quite qualified. "ever" is license to Keep every bit of junk ever written in draftspace. Legacypac (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

No, it's a requirement from the community to find a reason other than "lack of notability" to delete things in draft space, since notability only applies to main space. Diego (talk) 08:14, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Great you think that, but that is not practice at MfD or the comsidered opinions of most editors. Legacypac (talk) 11:03, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:NMFD in this same section links an RfC that makes completely clear this is not Diego's isolated opinion. It was snow-closed, in fact, with your !vote being the only one that takes the position that notability does apply. VQuakr (talk) 14:51, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac:, is this section the "see talk page" you referred to in response to my note that consensus was required for the proposed change? I do not see how anyone could characterize the discussion above, as it sits, as consensus to change the wording. VQuakr (talk) 14:51, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac:, do you realize that, if you delete drafts on the basis of notability, you're directly contradicting the community consensus as reflected in that RfC? If you want to change that consensus you should bring it again to Wikipedia Talk to debate it again, but acting against the consensus of a RfC discussion is considered disruptive. Diego (talk) 15:54, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Go read the RfC discussion carefully, not just the too simple close, and look at actual practice back to the dawn of time. I'm sorry but your argument simply holds no water. Legacypac (talk) 17:11, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I simply do not see how you can expect that argument (that a 16:1 "no" to "yes" ratio really meant "yes") to be taken seriously. The closing admin is still active, have you asked them to review/clarify their closure? VQuakr (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

"No context"

Same section, this seems out of place and I think it should be removed. For example, "There is insufficient context in the draft for me to determine the draft's subject" seems a perfectly acceptable MfD rationale. Any objections? VQuakr (talk) 19:18, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Agree - if we can't figure out what the topic is how can the Draft be useful? Legacypac (talk) 19:31, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

It may contain references and relevant facts about other topics, which should be included in other articles and thus should be WP:PRESERVEd. We have had in the past compilations of loosely asociated lists that don't belong in main space because of WP:NOT, but which nevertheless are valuable resources for the encyclopedia as they can be reused by editors as starting points to include as sections in other pages.

Therefore, I object, in case that wasn't clear from the above. One more time, drafts are not articles and article guidelines don't apply to them. Diego (talk) 13:07, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

How could you possibly use a draft with context so vague that its subject was indeterminate to form "starting points to include as sections in other pages"? VQuakr (talk) 19:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I seek deletion and get deletion on no context Drafts all the time. Many article guidelines apply to drafts, we are just a little looser with them. Drafts are articles under development, and if the page is not that, it should be removed. Legacypac (talk) 19:34, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

G13 section old vs abandoned

[5] the Twinkle description says "old, abandoned" but the [[WP:G13] criteria uses the word Abandoned more accurately. An "old" draft started a long time ago that is being actively worked on even occasionally is not subject to G13. An abandoned page is one that has not been improved in 6 months. The word Abandoned reflects G13 wording. I explained this in my edit summary [6]. I fail to see where there is any contention over this. Legacypac (talk) 02:18, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I think it's better to change the wording of G13: it was originally created to delete abandoned AfC drafts, but it now applies to old drafts, abandoned by editors or not. -- Taku (talk) 02:22, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Exactly the same standards as before only it now covers non-afc drafts. You know this. Legacypac (talk) 02:26, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Ok, so how about "unedited" so we don't have this debate about old/abandoned and have a very clear definition of the section header to indicate what is meant by this? Hasteur (talk) 02:29, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

That's not what I meant: we should use "old" instead of "abandoned" in the wording of G13 (because of the confusion). I'm fine with "unedited". -- Taku (talk) 02:32, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I think either "unedited" or "abandoned" is superior to "old", since the creation date of a draft does not inform G13 candidacy. I guess "abandoned" could, in theory, be interpreted to mean "no one cares about it" which is a value judgement that is impossible for an uninvolved gnome to assess, so if anyone thinks "unedited" is better let's go with that. VQuakr (talk) 19:23, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

• Unedited works ok. Legacypac (talk) 19:31, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Nominated vs deleted

I disagree with part of this change [7] because I perceive it will be used to argue that Admins should not G13 delete nominated drafts and it gets away from the plain language that reflect the vast majority of G13 nominations get deleted. Legacypac (talk) 02:26, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, the nominations can still be declined, I think. In some cases, they should be. -- Taku (talk) 02:33, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

No one is going to read this info page and think, shocked, that they are disallowed from declining a speedy nomination. The nuance of speedy deletion in general should be discussed at a different info page. Let's use the tighter wording of "...in six months may be deleted under criterion..."; any necessary weaseling is accomplished with the verb may. VQuakr (talk) 19:40, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Previously deleted draft

Template:Previously deleted draft has been nominated for deletion. Watchers of this page are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Steel1943 (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Add_always-present_template_at_the_top_of_every_draft.

Please comment at the above link. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:32, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

policy for Draftification

I have just copied the draft guidelines from Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Clarification_and_guidance_for_draftification to Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Clarification_and_guidance_for_draftification Wikipedia:Drafts#Draftification_of_pages_from_Article_Space. I think these are a fair description of accepted practice, including accepted limitations. Someone who is not qualified to be a new page patroller should not be unilaterally draftifying pages. Someone who repeatedly draftifies poorly should lose their NPR permission.

I think there is very little practice that is to be altered to fit, but documenting good practice is a good idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:31, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

• Guidelines for draftification were placed at Wikipedia:Drafts#Draftification_of_pages_from_Article_Space. These are, to my best research, accepted best practice, and are not seeking to change any known considered behaviours. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Can we add a category for tracking draftified articles?

I recently came across a draftified AfD which had been revised, much improved, and sent to AfC. While I had no difficulty putting the article in the main space, it seemed like a peculiar approach (which apparently worked to improve the article). My own feelings on a "likely notable but delete because the author hasn't proven it" approach aside, I was thinking it might be worth creating an draftified category, so we can keep track of these articles. I worry that draftified option may be seen as the "delete lite" button--between delete and keep, but one which defaults to delete. A category would allow perusal and tracking of the draftified articles. Thoughts? --TeaDrinker (talk) 03:56, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Draft chart talk

Better late the never ....pls see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#How_hard_would_it_be_to_set_up_ORES_for_the_Draft:_space? about linking or transclusion what is bellow.--Moxy (talk) 04:47, 21 April 2018 (UTC) Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/tables

@Moxy: - I've converted the template to a link in order to make the discussion easier to read. Please, stop directly transcluding the page everywhere after your signature - it is disruptive on talkpages. SQL^{Query me!} 04:51, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Opps my bad was trying {{tl|Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/tables}} but forgot {{tl part....but now realize it not even in tempspace,--Moxy (talk) 05:01, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Draftify

In a number of discussions it's been the starting point of some editor's opinions that moving an article to draft is a back-door deletion. When I've moved an article to draft I've always had it in mind that the article isn't ready for mainspace & needs improvement - improvement being preferable to deletion. I think the objective of improvement needs to be emphasised in the draftify guidance, specifically -

When moving an article to draftspace its talk page should be tagged with the relevant WikiProjects in order to maximise its potential for collaborative improvement.

Any thoughts? Cabayi (talk) 20:33, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

In fact, there is no need to restrict that to drafts moved from the mainspace. We should introduce a tagging mechanism (I have proposed one above) so that it is possible to have a list of drafts by subject (relevant WikiProject.) -- Taku (talk) 20:48, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

But if an article has the "potential for collaborative improvement", there's no justification for removing it from mainspace (per Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Reasons for deletion and WP:IMPERFECT).

Some editors seem to have decided that there are a set of criteria that need to be met for an article to be "ready for mainspace", beyond the community-accepted of standard of "is a viable topic for an encyclopaedia article". I'd suggest that if you want logical guidelines on draftifying, the place to start would be clarifying what those criteria are, and seeking a community consensus for their application. – Joe (talk) 21:03, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not seeking to re-hash the multiple discussions already taking place about WHEN (or whether) to move an article to draft, but to set some guidance on HOW it's done. Cabayi (talk) 21:08, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

HOW it's done is you click move. You are suggesting that we add that text that clearly implies that 'improvable' articles can be moved to Draft:, which directly contradicts the policies I have mentioned above. – Joe (talk) 21:10, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't know the history but this is not a place for the deletion policy (or whether/when to move to the draftspace). To repeat, I believe some tagging system is a good idea. We can/should have a discussion on that idea. -- Taku (talk) 21:29, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the points made here that if an subject is worthy it should be kept in mainspace for collaboration. However in cases that require draftify, I think Cabayi suggestion is a great idea.

Also, given that drafts can be speedily deleted without any discussion after six months through "g13", then yes I would say that draftify is a backdoor deletion. Egaoblai (talk) 02:27, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I share Joe Roe's concerns. Draftifying articles is a grey area. @Cabayi: However, I would fully support:

When moving a userspace draft to the draftspace per WP:STALE, its talk page should be tagged with the relevant WikiProjects in order to maximize its potential for collaborative improvement.

— Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:28, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Godsy, from our discussions elsewhere I understand why you want to add "per WP:STALE," but the net effect of adding that qualifier is that you're objecting to adding projects if a userspace draft is moved to the draftspace for any other reason. Cabayi (talk) 20:07, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

One source of promising material

Check out this search: [8]. I went through the first 40 and found 12 that I moved to mainspace after no or very minor revisions. The process took me about an hour and a half. (This may mean that the first 28 are now garbage, because I already looked at them.) It might be nice to get a report of declined drafts that contain the word "died" or sandbox pages or things tagged user draft that contain the word "died". Chances are very good that a dead person being written about is notable. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:16, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

"Chances are very good that a dead person being written about is notable." Yes, more likely notable, certainly a new page on a dead person is less likely to be promotional for-profit spam. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Moves of non-new article to draftspace without discussion

User:Boleyn has moved a great many non-new articles to draftspace without discussion.[9] I first noticed this at Draft:San Antonio Island (Spain), but there appear to be dozens of affected articles, some of which were years old when moved by Boleyn. This seems to contradict the rules at Wikipedia:Drafts#Moving_articles_to_draft_space. Are her moves consistent with policy? In my opinion, it is highly problematic to unilaterally move articles from mainspace to draftspace when the default outcome in draftspace is deletion after six months. By the way, I'm not concerned with moves of unreferenced or significantly underreferenced BLP articles. Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:54, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The article was created in June 2017 and draftified in November, a time when there was a large backlog at new page patrol, so it could have been draftified under the "during new page review" clause. Having said which, the island exists, and as a geographical feature we ought to keep it: Noyster (talk), 10:17, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Calliopejen1, if you have a question about an editor's work, it's more polite to just post a question to their talk page. All those were either in New Page Patrol backlog, or were written by problematic editors, who had refused to engage in discussions about where they had got their information and were possible copyright infringements or WP:OR. If you feel any do not fall under those umbrellas, please message me and I'll be happy to look at them again. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 19:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)