Category talk:Article drafts in userspace

Drafts

Swept in from the pub

A quick question.

Why is there not a Draft namespace on English Wikivoyage? Two items are currently in my User space, for the lack of a better location. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:22, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Because it has not been introduced. I think en-wp is in a minority having it. On sv-wp it has been discussed, but we have concluded pages in a draft namespace would mostly be forgotten. In mainspace they get attention and have some chances to develop. If they are not mature enough for mainspace (after some quick fixes, usually done by patrollers), they are probably not mature enough to be worked on by the general community. Unless the original author (and those who join developing in userspace) can get the article past that threshold, it is better they stay as that user's private bad conscience. --LPfi (talk) 20:22, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Enwiki is definitely a minority, and the wiki-researchers (including some of the people who helped create the draftspace originally) are concerned about it. It's basically the place new articles go to die. If you want a growing community and growing content, you should not introduce draftspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

In addition to what LPfi and WhatamIdoing said (and I agree with what they said), one of the main reasons it was introduced on en-wp doesn't apply to us. It was a place where experienced editors look at newbies writing new articles can be monitored more easily. We don't get many of those in the first place. Experienced users can just use user subpages if they want to start an article that isn't finished from their perspective. Gizza ^(roam) 07:17, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I haven't been on en.wp for a couple of years, but recall that it differs from other projects by refusing to let unregistered users create articles directly in mainspace. Instead, they have this broken articles for creation wikiproject where new articles proposed by unregistered users languish for weeks at a time before an "experienced" editor reviews the texts to reject many or most of them. WP:AFC therefore ends up paralleling WP:NPP, the new pages patrol for newly-created articles by logged-in users. The wording of the templates encourage rejected authors to keep revising and resubmitting articles, which is generally a waste of time as most are merely rejected again on some arbitrary basis. There is an attitude on en.wp that "another AFC special" (an article which made it through the articles for creation tarpit and actually made it to mainspace) is still a bigger target to be nominated for deletion (AfD) because it was written by a newbie and many new users are prone to submit poorly-sourced or self-promotional topics as articles. So yes, it's where new articles go to die. K7L (talk) 14:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Enwiki is even more restrictive, as of a few months ago. Now, to create an article in the mainspace, your account has to be at least four days old, and you must have made at least ten edits to any page (even whitespace changes count). So now there are many paid spammers that make ten trivial edits before dumping their spam straight into the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

It is also easy to tell about a page in userspace and invite others to fix issues you need help with. I think such an announcement (probably in the pub, then moved to a dedicated page listing such pages needing work) gives most of the advantages of a draft space over userspace drafts without introducing any significant problems. --LPfi (talk) 08:45, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Would a category for Draft articles be accpetable then? (we already have cateories for outline articles..) etc..ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

A category sounds like a good idea to me. It would help interested editors find userspace drafts to help work on. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:32, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

So a decision on a name then? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:36, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Category:Articles needing improvement or Category:Stub articles these being set by {{Needsimprovement}} or {{stub}}. Or plain old {{outlinecity}} etc. Do not see a need for another? --Traveler100 (talk) 16:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree, there are already sufficient categories/indicators for the draft status, the argument to create a new category seems rather weak to me. ArticCynda (talk) 20:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I disagree, a mainspace article in need of repair is not the same animal as a userspace draft which isn't finished yet. Each category should have one purpose and only one purpose, anything else makes the category structure much less usable and less useful. Different purpose? Different category. K7L (talk) 02:55, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks - Any chance of copyediting {{Userdraft}} ? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:49, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Why is a category needed? Just create the draft in your userspace and let people know you invite them to read and edit by posting s notice in the pub. It's not like we have 20 zillion of these. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:58, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Content from the pub (Should get swept) from time to time. The category idea is to keep track of them, but I'll consider the categories noted previously. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:12, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Using the general stub and outline categories would interfere with using those categories for maintenance. Needsimprovement is probably fine, unless it gets crowded, at which point it could be split up. --LPfi (talk) 18:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Updated the relevant template, and this disscussion could be swept to it's talk page. In the meantime feel free to mark your Userspace Drafts with

{{Userdraft}}. Please let me know if the wording on that template could be improved. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps <includeonly>Category:Article drafts in userspace</includeonly> should have their own category instead of misusing an existing articles in need of improvement category? K7L (talk) 01:43, 6 June 2018 (UTC)