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RfC: Draft classifier template

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Background: This RfC is about a possible implementation of some suggestions made in earlier RfCs and other threads. It has been suggested that it is desirable to have

• A way to indicate that someone looked at a draft and, although not ready to be moved to the mainspace, the content should be kept; i.e., should be exempted from G13, which essentially is an automatic deletion mechanism for old AfC drafts.
• A way to sort or rate the drafts by subject, notability or potential encyclopedic value.
• Some streamlined deletion mechanisms for non-AfC drafts.

Proposal: I propose we use a template that looks like the following to implement the above objectives:

Usage:

• The template is to be added at the top of a page in the draftspace (not drafts in user pages).
• "Main" is an automatic link to the page of the same name in the mainspace; the link is typically red but this allows a draft to show up in "what links here". If the link is blue, then that would indicate the draft is a fork.
• "Notability" can be either "unset", "unlikely", "likely" or "yes". The idea is that setting "notability" = "unlikely" is a diplomatic way to tell a draft is hopeless.
• "Subject" will be filled using a drop-down menu (apparently that's possible?), using the classification in Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Compact. Its initial value will be "unset". The field will be used to create an automatic list of drafts by subject.
• "G13 applicable" is perhaps most controversial. By default, this field will be "yes" if the draft is an AfC draft and "no" otherwise. But we allow the editors to change that setting. In the spirit of "assuming good faith", we ask editors not to indiscriminately change the field to "yes" or "no". Note also that allowing this option represents an extension of G13 to non-AfC drafts.
• There may be further optional fields such as "merge target".

One might find some details about the deployment are missing. This is deliberate; please make suggestion if there is any. -- Taku (talk) 22:52, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• Conditional support: even as a proposer, I have some reservation about this; that this might open up a path for abuse. If this were to be implemented, I think we need some policy mechanism to make sure that editors are not setting the G13 field to be yes en masse. -- Taku (talk) 23:01, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support I don't think Taku needs to be so cautious, as this template does not compel deletion of any draft. It is just an indication that someone has looked at that draft and concluded that it is or is not worth saving. It will help us in evaluating the contents of Draft space and indicating those drafts that merit further examination. I also support the extension of G13 to non-AfC drafts where this field has been set to "yes" on the proposed template: why should drafts be exempt from this process just because they have never been before an AfC reviewer?: Noyster (talk), 15:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Because draft space contains pages that at some point were moved from article space, and were placed here for reasons other than being unfinished (dubious notability, changes in policy since the article was created...). It doesn't make sense to apply an unambiguous speedy deletion criterion meant for half-backed submissions, which is G13, to pages that are not abandoned submissions. Diego (talk) 09:17, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support as per discussions above. Great idea for dealing with a space that needs organizing but also some love. Panyd 17:49, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Looks good. However "Notability" and "G13 applicable" come pretty close to being redundant. There is something wrong if someone is tagging it as non-notable and G13 exempt. I also find it hard to picture when a yes-notable rating by an experienced editor should be differentiated from asserting a G13 exemption. In any case, I suggest the entire "G13 applicable: yes" should render as blank. This avoids confusing newbies with mysterious babble, and reduces the likelyhood that they'll mess with it. If someone wants to assert an anti-G13 claim on the draft, let them put ~~~~ into the field. Then render that as something like Patron: <expanded signature>. "Patron" is probably the wrong term. It was the first term I could think of, to indicate the person wanting to claim long-term retention for the draft. Putting the signature in there lets us know who to talk to, if someone else considers the draft to be non-viable. The signature's timestamp seems like a decent freebie. Alsee (talk) 21:59, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Agree about the two fields being closely related: "G13 applicable" could be autofilled depending on the contents of "Notability", able to be overwritten in some exceptional case. The G13 field has the function of making it immediately clear if someone did not want the draft deleted. Don't think we need this unusual "patron" thing: no-one owns articles; no analogue for similar actions like declining a PROD; not hard to see from page history who it was that filled the template: Noyster (talk), 07:21, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Basically what Noyster said. It's like if you are not married, you can leave some fields blank when filling a form. The template can be programed so that notability = yes results in G13 = no by default. I think it is important that the G13 field is not hidden; there have been too many instances of the use of G13 for non-AfC drafts. This must be an indication of the design flaw, which this template attempts to, well not solve but alleviate at least. The template is akin to a stub template; i.e., the main purpose is to sort pages so that the editors can zero in some specific instances. If there is any dispute on say notability, that has to be resolved independent of the template. -- Taku (talk) 22:57, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Only if "Note also that allowing this option represents an extension of G13 to non-AfC drafts" is implemented. Currently, G13 depends on whether a draft contains the {{AFC submission}} template, hence a draft could easily be non-notable and G13 exempt. — Godsy_CONT) 08:37, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - I'll basically reiterate what I said in Misplaced Pages talk:Drafts#Draft classifier: It should be optional; I don't support a bot applying it to all drafts, and the creator and others drafting should be free to remove an application of the template if they so desire. Core content policy field(s) with options may be a good idea as well. — Godsy_CONT) 07:32, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose due to "Note also that allowing this option represents an extension of G13 to non-AfC drafts." That should be proposed on its own, not through the backdoor, lumped in with what seems at first like an innocuous new template. Would drafts be eligible six months after the G13 parameter was set to "yes"?; What if one editor deems it not eligible and another changes it later?— Godsy_CONT) 08:01, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. The question of whether to extend G13 to non-AfC drafts is a policy question that should not be tucked within a discussion of templates. As for the notability setting, which draft creator would not set it to "likely" or "yes"? NewYorkActuary (talk) 11:59, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

  About the second point: the standard response is "assume good faith". Wiki has continued to be a radical idea today; anyone can edit? Crazy? What if someone inserted false information? In Misplaced Pages, we use Wiki and I don't think the draftspace is any different (or maybe the draftspace shouldn't be wiki???). Less philosophically, I don't think every creator would automatically set the notability to be yes. Some newbies don't have good idea of notability. Even if the creator sets the notability to be yes, I think that's good; it means the creator is consciously making an assertion that they think the topic is notable. This is better than some instruction (AfC wizard) that asks to follow the notability rule.

  As for the first point, the question is on both if and how to extend G13 to non-AfCs drafts. We had some early discussion before on if. So, I don't think asking if and how simultaneously is particularly problematic. -- Taku (talk) 23:13, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

  The proposed system is too complicated. Pages in the draftspace should either be eligible for deletion after a certain amount of time or not, without depending on a parameter that can fluctuate at a whim, which opens the door widely for gamesmanship and disputes. If consensus is gained for such pages to be eligible for deletion after a certain amount of time, something on the order of, but more limited than, {{G8-exempt}} could be considered for G13 (though that would share some of the same flaws). — Godsy_CONT) 09:17, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

  @Godsy: But that's not the current system; the current system distinguishes between AfC drafts and non-AfC ones. This is apparently confusing and thus is a source of errors (the design flaw mentioned above). I would argue that the template like this one clarifies the situation since it will tells whether G13 applies or not very explicitly. For me that seems an improvement. -- Taku (talk) 23:18, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, I understand how the current system works. I supported its suspension. The system proposed here is more confusing, not less. — Godsy_CONT) 04:44, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

• Procedural oppose This RFC should be closed and replaced with three separate RFCs about each of the proposals. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:03, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

What 3 components? (I get the G13 part but what is the third?) If you prefer, you can think this RfC consists of several parts and support or oppose each component separately. -- Taku (talk) 18:16, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

• Conditional support Everyone above has presented good points regarding this and I too am concerned that the G13 bit could be possibly exploited and/or used en masse. With that said, I think it is a good idea as the draft space is full of drafts that do not have a hope and/or have not been edited for (in some cases) literal years. I have come across drafts not edited since 2015 or earlier that are clearly abandoned but not eligible under current guidelines/policy. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 03:02, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

I still fail to see why there should be any action performed on pages that have not been edited in years. Again, what is exactly the problem that requires deletion of non-AfC drafts, and why can't it be solved with MfD? Diego (talk) 13:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem, Diego, is that these thousands of totally unsuitable drafts are part of Misplaced Pages, available to any reader, and as Anne Delong pointed out above: 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. Swamping the MfD discussion channel with large numbers of open-and-shut cases would not be a good response. So G13 needs to apply to non-AfC drafts, subject to action on the "significant support" already identified to allow any experienced editor to exempt a promising AFC draft from G13 deletion indefinitely. This proposal offers a compact way to achieve both, and instead of adding to the already extensive series of discussions on this page each concluding "this isn't quite it", it's time for this one to be approved I think: Noyster (talk), 17:25, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Why is it a problem that unsuitable drafts are available to readers? They are very obviously not Misplaced Pages articles, and will only be found by editors wanting to search content for expanding the description of a topic. They are not part of the encyclopedia any more than drafts and essays in user space. For the few examples that require deletion for being problematic, such as copyright and BLP violations, there are already ways to speedely delete them. I still fail to see any argument that would justify a massive deletion of pages in draft space that won't equally apply to the User:, WP: and Talk: spaces, and which we don't delete in the same way. Diego (talk) 18:19, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

This is a bit digressive and hope the others don't mind. I have this theory: some people enjoy deleting stuff. There is this segment of the editors who are more interested in simply engaging in the activities in Misplaced Pages. What interests them isn't an encyclopedia-building. The end game is the deletion; that the content is of low quality gives them a cover. From the encyclopedia-building standpoint, there is not much gain by deleting stuff in the draftspace. Some might ask (and they have): what is of the use of having the content that will never go to the mainspace? The standard response is that it is useful to allow for some failures and mistakes for the content development. A novelist might not finish all of their drafts. That's perfectly ok since they can learn from what didn't work and often they can start new works based on the failed attempts. I thus tend to see the draftspace as a place, where one can try to develop the contents (duh?); others simply don't share that point of view. -- Taku (talk) 21:32, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Diego Moya: - I still fail to see why there should be any action performed on pages that have not been edited in years - I seem to be approaching this from the opposite end but the problem for me is that there is a veritable treasure trove of potential content that nobody is looking at, because there's no system where they are easily accessible. Reviewers are being swamped because they're a rare breed but image what content creators could do with a giant repository of potential subjects? Panyd 17:52, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

@Panyd: You're right, and I agree that there should be a repository of well classified drafts; I should have said "I don't see why there should be any deletion action" with them. My concern is that, once some pages have been classified as "poor quality / unlikely notability", some people will push for getting them deleted, which is a severe problem. Drafts should not be deleted after only one or two people have reviewed them, if they don't incur in any of the problems that merit speedy removal (BLP, copyvio, attack pages, etc).

Hiding those pages would be against having that large pool of potential valid content available for content creators. Even if many (or most!) of those pages is very low quality, a good classification system and/or some automatic data mining tools could help future editors find the gems of valuable data standing among the noise. This could never happen if the low quality drafts are removed, even if a mechanism exist to REFUND individual pages one by one. Diego (talk) 09:49, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Before the creation of Draft space, all of the "drafts" were in "Misplaced Pages talk" space. The problem with that is that when mirror sites copied the pages, they all started with the word "Misplaced Pages", which made it easy to mistake the text for a Misplaced Pages article. Now that the pages just say "Draft", it's less of a problem, because although the text may appear on the internet, it is not necessarily associated with Misplaced Pages. If the proposed draft classification happens, it's important that this benefit is not undone by introducing the word "Misplaced Pages" back onto the pages.—Anne Delong (talk) 23:10, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

• But Anne, the word "Misplaced Pages" is on the pages. There it is, right under the title line: . If you ever want to know what a Link really is or How to grow body snatcher plants, Misplaced Pages has it all!: Noyster (talk), 10:03, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

• That text is on our site, but typically won't appear on mirror sites. Diego (talk) 12:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

• Partial support, with caveats. I agree to create a formal, unified mechanism for classifying drafts by subject. I concur with Roger that the inclusion of tags for "subject", "(estimated) notability" and "G13-applicable" should be decided separately. I would support the subject tag, and maybe the notability tag (with the caveat that unlikely notable drafts should not be deleted without a MfD, even if they become stalled).

I don't like the G13 part as is - anyone nominating for G13 should already know to look for the presence of the AfC template and understand that it can't be applied without it. Maybe the tag should be "Speedy deletion applicable? (Yes/no)", and in case of "Yes", the parameter should say what speedy criterion can by applied (so it could be either G13 if it really is an abandoned AfC, G12, G3, etc). Diego (talk) 10:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment - there's a proposal below for classifying drafts through specific categories, rather than with templates. Any one else supports it? This would largely solve the issue, IMHO. Diego (talk) 09:39, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I too am aware of that proposal. But thr proposal is about classifying drafts having the draft template and so it will not apply to the vast majority of pages in the draftspace. Also, the use of categories is inappropriate in my opinion; categories provide the navigation system for readers; drafts have no readers. -- Taku (talk) 09:15, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

You don't think editors should also benefit from having a proper navigation system, to find promising drafts? Diego (talk) 10:36, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

We shouldn't treat drafts like regular articles; setting up the categories, etc, can make the draftspace that is just like a part of Misplaced Pages. I agree that we need to setup some system to list drafts by subject. I think this should be like the lists of requested articles. In fact, as I mentioned before, I think it makes sense to have the system of lists of requested articles merged with the draftspaces. "Makes sense" since the end game is the same, to prepare mainspace articles. -- Taku (talk) 19:17, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

poor visibility of drafts

Take Kursk (film) as an example. There is a draft: Draft:Kursk (film) and the mainspace article redirects to the director's article.

But the only way I found that out was an off-hand comment in the edit history!

What is needed is either or both of two things:

1. that we create a redirect template that essentially says the opposite of the Draft article template: that this is a draft placeholder redirect pending some event that makes the draft go live.
2. whenever I start editing an article, the system checks if there's a Draft and informs me. (Not just at article creation that is; we're in the scenario when someone tries to edit the redirect in good faith)

There must be a big hint: "don't bother reinventing the wheel" - there's already a draft HERE, go look at that instead of writing an article from "scratch" where scratch means a placeholder redirect.

It's just a waste of effort when people redo articles from scratch - not to mention the "ownership" issues when a draft is mostly created by a single editor that vigilantly shoots down any attempts (in mainspace) to do what he or she has already done. CapnZapp (talk) 21:31, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

This is the old id of the effort that was repeatedly shot down: There have been at least one other attempt at a Kursk (film) article, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Kursk_%28film%29&oldid=770388296

I maintain that one effort is not inherently superior to the other. Why should one live on as a draft and presumably in mainspace, while the other is reverted debris?

And please don't answer "editors that don't know about Draft mainspace deserve getting deleted". We really can't allow people to revert efforts just because they have something lined up already. It's far too invisible! But mostly: yes, editors do revert cases like this without being friendly and inviting and explaining the existence of Drafts. So the system should do it automatically. CapnZapp (talk) 21:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

The fundamental tension is that, by design, the drafts are not too visible. Since the drafts likely have some issues (else they should be in the mainspace), we don't want to make it too easy for the readers to find out about them. So, that's why it is, for example, not appropriate to have a redirect to a draft article. I do agree they should be more visible to the interested editors, although I don't know the best way to achieve that. (One option is to use the classifier template that I proposed early.) -- Taku (talk) 04:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

It's OK that drafts are not too visible to readers, but we should find ways to make them visible to editors. I agree that the system should make it easy to know when a draft exists for an article, whenever the topic title leads to an empty page or a redirect. Diego (talk) 10:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Agreement on the reader vs editor issue. In this particular case, the article is about an upcoming film. Per policy WP:NFF it is correct for no article to exist at this particular time, but that doesn't stop drafts from existing. The problem here is that the draft author deletes attempts at article creation. While this is technically correct (per aforementioned policy) it would be much preferred (and just) to incorporate those attempts in the existing draft. There are two issues:

1. 1. that the editor might not even know the draft exists. Remember, he doesn't create a new page (that previously was deleted), he merely upgrades a redirect into a real article.
   2. the editor with the draft should not have some kind of precedence. But this is exactly what the current situation will lead to! When the article can be published (in this case, that principal photography have commenced) one editor's efforts will become visible (the editor of the draft) while another editor's efforts will go in the garbage bin (=exist as reverted in page history) or even not exist at all (if page is deleted entirely and then draft is used to recreate article). NOTE: I realize having a draft will always have precedence since that is the proper way of doing things, but then it is an absolute must that other editors are invited into the draft work rather than having their efforts (in mainspace) merely reverted or deleted.

As a final note, I'm sure you all are already aware that drafts can exist not only in the parallell Draft namespace, but at users own pages too. How to ensure that editors are made aware of such drafts, I leave up to you. One option would be to have Draft namespace be automatically alerted, and to prohibit uninformative deletions when you sit on a "secret" draft. Also; whenever an article is moved from Draft to mainspace, it should be mandatory to look through page history for useful efforts of people unaware of that their edits were made in the "wrong" place. CapnZapp (talk) 13:56, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I think that if this were done as an WP:EDITNOTICE, it would allow editors to find the draft without advertising it to readers. However, since editnotices on articles can only be edited by administrators or template editors, this would either have to be done by placing a group notice on all of article space that automatically detects if a draft exists (but checking for page existence is expensive from a server-time standpoint, so we probably don't want to do it for every page edit) or having a bot with the appropriate permissions that creates the mainspace edit notice when it detects draft creation (which means we would also want to update our admin procedures for deleting drafts to include deleting the editnotice, and set up the bot to flag them with {{Db-g8}} if an administrator misses it). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

My previous comment somehow snuck in before yours, Ahecht. It was not intentional. Regards CapnZapp (talk) 13:59, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ahecht: I concur that a WP:EDITNOTICE is the best way to do this. The edit notice would be populated through {{draft}} and {{Userspace draft}}. To ensure this works properly, bots should regularly check and add this to every page in the Draft namespace that doesn't already have it. Should we submit this in Phabricator as a feature request? Sondra.kinsey (talk) 14:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Sondra.kinsey: {{Draft article}} is already much farther use than {{draft}}.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 14:23, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Is Misplaced Pages talk:Drafts/Archive 2#Announcing Template:DraftChecker helpful? Thincat (talk) 14:28, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Thincat: FYI, that template is embedded in the one I mentioned above.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 14:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not ideal, as even though it's hidden for logged-out users, it would still run for them, which would mean that we would be performing an expensive operation (checking for page existence) on every single page edit. There's no advantage over just using {{#ifexist:Draft:{{FULLPAGENAME}}, which would actually be as simple as removing a conditional from {{Editnotices/Namespace/Main}} (since it already does that check if the article doesn't exist). I think it would be easier on the servers to have a bot add {{There is a draft for this article}} to the editnotices of pages with drafts. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:49, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

There is no need to add a template to every page in the Draft namespace. A bot could search for either a page in the draft namespace or a page with one of the three draft templates. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:58, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

RFC pointer: CSD G13 to include all draft-space drafts

Watchers of this page may be interested in WT:CSD#Expand G13 to cover ALL old drafts. --Izno (talk) 12:08, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

That proposal has been opposed at this page for years and now it gets discussed at a different page? How quaint. Diego (talk) 07:20, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Can you point to past discussions here? New CSD criteria get proposed at WT:CSD. It is driven, for me, by the state of MfD, see WT:MfD. Do you have alternative suggestions? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Best idea I've seen in a long time for dealing properly with the mountain of crap so we can find the notable Drafts Legacypac (talk) 15:49, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

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

Draft classifier	Main: Misplaced Pages. Notability: yes. Subject: Culture.

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 Misplaced Pages. Consider a different topic. Would you support keeping forever a hundred drafts where each was a trivial mention of a character from pop culture? Misplaced Pages 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 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 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages. (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

Classification	Main: Misplaced Pages. Notability: yes. Subject: Culture. Internal review: promising

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)

RfC: the clarification on the purpose of the draftspace

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a clear disagreement on the proper use of the draftspace. For example, one edtior in the just above section wrote "a draft must be developed or face deletion". This is a very clear indication that, in his view, there exists a deadline of sort on the pages in the draftspace; the user is not alone in thinking that way (develop or die!). My understanding is that the draftspace was created to host drafts that are previously hosted in the user pages; so to improve discoverability or avoid duplicate efforts. This meant no deadline for example. Anyway, I just wonder what the other editors think and I want it to be on the record that the claim like "a draft must be developed or face deletion" is as fake as (put your favorite example). -- Taku (talk) 21:10, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

• Because TakuyaMurata is not telling the full truth, I will. TakuyaMurata wants to legitimize their argument that Draft space is the perfect place to store micro-stubs that barely have enough content such as Draft:Cotensor product forever without any improvement. That Math wikiproject has suggested that they take their content back to userspace (which has been rejected), that MFDs have endorsed the delete, that I and others have suggested to him that instead of creating new content, he finish cleaning up what messes he's already made. In short, Drafts are administration pages in the Draft namespace where new articles may be stored. They help facilitate new articles to develop and receive feedback before being moved to Misplaced Pages's mainspace. nowhere in the policy page does it indicate that drafts that appear to have a chance at becoming articles ergo why WP:NOTWEBHOST applies. Hasteur (talk) 22:38, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
• This pseudo RfC is nonsense. One editor wants to indefinitely store fragments on a website, and they have chosen Misplaced Pages. The problem is that mounting piles of stuff means it becomes impossible for anyone to find useful content in the drafts—content that might be developed to an article. The purpose of Misplaced Pages is to develop an encyclopedia, and indefinitely storing passing thoughts about topics related to science or pop-culture or anything is not helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 01:44, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
• See User:TakuyaMurata/Drafts for a list of about 50 such pages. If Taku spent half the time on developing his microstub drafts as he does defending their existence we would have several dozen useful articles instead of silly drama. Legacypac (talk) 05:01, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
• Suggest Speedy close as this RFC is clearly improper. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:02, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
• Suggest Speedy close as this RFC is clearly improper, and as per Legacypac. Also suggesting that TakuyaMurata withdraw this RfC themself or face a lot of complaints for wasting the community's time. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:06, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC: on the proper use of the draftspace

• RFCs with no clear proposal are rarely productive.
• The "proper use of draftspace" is to work the page towards mainspace. Informally, the general community consensus appears to be that draft space is a useful place for productive drafts, and that vast numbers of hopeless or unproductive perma-drafts are disruptive.
• It is generally a poor idea to open an RFC less than 13 hours after a previous RFC was closed. It was particularly unwise, when that RFC was rapidly snowed with speedy close responses cautioning you to withdraw this RfC or face a lot of complaints for wasting the community's time.
• Advertising this RFC at Village Pump didn't help.
• You are severely advised not to hastily open yet another RFC without getting some support for the question or proposal. Alsee (talk) 07:06, 31 July 2017 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

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.

There does exist a need for some broad discussion about the proper use of the draftspace, as opposed to having local fights in MfDs and such. As I wrote above, the draftspace was created to hold draft pages that were previously kept in the user pages. The idea was this would reduce, for example, the duplicate efforts or allow a new editor to pick up when old drafts are left abandoned. This is why imposing a deadline or deleting abandoned drafts does not make sense. It is important to codify this fact somehow. (Moving the draft pages to the user pages also make no sense for the same reason.) The RfC is the best method for that. Can we just cool down and have actual discussion? (Obviously having discussion should not be opposed for the sake of opposition.) -- Taku (talk) 03:31, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm aware of the view that the draftspace is a failed attempt or not heading in the right direction. We may need to revisit that view; i.e., maybe we should just dump the draftspace. Please comment on that too. -- Taku (talk) 03:41, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

• Experience from participating in RfCs shows that they are pointless unless framed in terms of an actionable question to be resolved. Is the proposal that WP:NOTWEBHOST should be repealed and people should be able to store drafts indefinitely? Johnuniq (talk) 04:49, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
  • This is the third discussion Taku has started along these lines, presumably to support his use of draftspace as a webhost for a bunch of stubs. If a fourth discussion goes up before the week is out, the proposal will be to topic ban Taku from discussions related to the use of draftspace. ~ Rob₁₃ 05:21, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I would be inclined to support such a topic ban already, no need to wait for a fourth "discussion". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:37, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Being able to store some drafts indefinitely is not a revocation of WP:NOTWEBHOST, since that policy only applies to personal content. Encyclopedic facts that may belong in an article are governed by WP:PRESERVE, which mandates us to keep them around, yes, even permanently. I don't know about the stubs that TakuyaMurata wants to preserve, but drafts that are fact-based, supported by reliable sources and relevant to the topic defined by the draft's title are good candidates for keeping them forever, so that we have a chance to eventually find good use for them. (Also, we don't need to change policy to be able to keep some drafts indefinitely; this is the status quo now). Diego (talk) 08:56, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
  • (For the record, I'm not interested in preservating my stubs. Some took me 3 min to create and don't mind if they are gone. This RfC is not about my personal stuff but about the confusion on the proper use of the draftspace. -- Taku (talk) 09:02, 31 July 2017 (UTC))

(This RfC is unrelated to the draft classification template.) To respond, I'm not proposing anything concrete but is asking for the clarification. For example, WP:NOTWEBHOST is really about off-topic content; it doesn't say anything about the draft pages on notable topics. If the community believes there need to be the deadlines on draft pages that has to be properly documented and mentioned in the main page. Obviously we can have a discussion right? -- Taku (talk) 08:38, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Here is a concrete question

How do we determine whether the draft pages are developing towards the eventual move to the mainspace?

I do think this seems to be the heart of the matter. I agree the draftspace should not be used as a place to merely host encyclopedic content (incidentally WP:NOTWEBHOST is not about this). Currently there is no good way to make such a determination, I agree. I guess my point is that deletion need not be the answer to this question, except the no-hope case (if an AfC page was rejected for multiple times, we can safely assume it's not going to move to the mainspace and thus the deletion is appropriate.) -- Taku (talk) 09:07, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

  Notice: Multiple administrators threatened Taku with a topic ban. Taku then proceeded to revert a closure on this discussion. I acknowledge my closure was uncommonly prompt, however I believe it was warranted. In case Taku is unfamiliar with community expectations regarding closures, you do not simply edit war a closure you dislike. According to Challenging other closures, the first step is to take any concerns to the closer (me) trying to amicably resolve the situation. If I fail to adequately respond to your concerns, you can request a Close Review at Administrator's Noticeboard.

I do not intend to edit-war to restore my close. If someone else would like to restore my close, I invite you to do so. Alsee (talk) 09:18, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Alsee, the topic of this RfC is legitimate, and some people here are trying to discuss it. I don't think it should be closed merely because of some disagreement with the editor who opened it; that seems contrary to the spirit of WP:DR. Diego (talk) 09:35, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In my opinion, two very good indicators of advance in a draft are:

1. It exists
2. It has not been deleted (yet).

Any draft that has survived all the deletion processes in place has very good chances of being suitable material. I've lost count of how many times I've followed a link to learn what someone had to say about some interesting topic, only to find out that it had been speedily deleted, PRODed or AfD'd with very low participation.

People arguing for "cleanup" (i.e. removal) of everything which is not perfect have a very short term view of the utility of draft content. Some decades from now, a researcher might make good use of any available information for a topic that has become completely unknown. Even if it's totally unreliable, any tidbit of information can be a starting point to ask the right questions for researching the topic. Moreover, we're starting to see information procesing techniques that rely on large corpuses of content, and could take advantage and find the needle in the haystack. Even if each piece has low value on its own, keeping them around will provide much value in the aggregate.

Draft space is the perfect place to keep those bits of information that don't infringe any policy for the long term, as keeping them out of view doesn't cause harm, and this large of freely licensed content and has such large potential for automated treatment. Diego (talk) 09:32, 31 July 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 ] 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 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)

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