User talk:Joe Roe/Seven tips for new page patrolling
5. Don't draftify – feedback[edit]
Hey @Joe Roe, I found that I largely agreed with the essay and think that it's generally helpful, but I wanted to pick your brain a bit on point 5 ("Don't draftify". I largely agreed with the premise behind the point, but I don't feel like we should rule out draftifying in some situations. While I wouldn't call my early draftifications wrong, I do find myself drafifying less often than I used to. This is largely due to the numerous discussions that have taken place since I joined NPP where I've found the community divided on the practice, including a subset in the discussions that push back on it altogether. Do you believe there is a middle ground between being CSD worthy and being worth keeping in main space? As in, do you have situations in mind where draftification would be appropriate? Hey man im josh (talk) 13:25, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
- Glad to hear it. Obviously, I realised that this (together with #4) would be quite a provocative suggestion. But I wouldn't have bothered writing an essay if I thought everyone already saw things this way!
- I've thought a lot about draftspace and draftification over the years and I found it really difficult to distill those thoughts into practical advice. I didn't want to go into all the positives and negatives of draftification here (though I think the negatives outweight positives, which colours my advice), but only the most relevant for NPPers. I'm still not entirely happy with the result, but I felt I needed to post this now or I never would (I've actually been working on it on and off for like a year).
- I don't want to misunderstand you—obviously there is a very large space between "CSD-worthy" and "retain in mainspace", which is covered by the other deletion processes—but probably you meant is there a middle ground between deletion-of-any-type and retaining in mainspace? In that case, I would say that there might be one, but it is very small, and not enough to overcome the considerable downsides to draftification in terms of the efficiency of NPP, adherence to WP:PRESERVE, and editor retention/growth.
- I think your experience is typical in that many of the most experienced and high-volume reviewers draftify dramatically less frequently than people just starting out. There are probably a lot of things going on there—awareness of the controversy, like you say—but I think one part of it at least is that draftification is rarely outright wrong, it's just also rarely the best option. With experience, people become better at spotting the alternatives and less susceptable to the misapprehension that draftify.js is an all-purpose make-this-article-go-away button.
- The two places where I think there are is a clear-cut case for draftification (and I've just noted this is also what Rosguill advises in Wikipedia:Quick guide to reviewing new articles) are for COI/PE violations and upcoming events. However, at one time I actually did quite a bit of work in the former, and almost every time I was tempted to draftify I found that a WP:CSD#G11, PROD, or AfD did the job more effectively. I know I'm a sample of one, but I've reviewed about 3500 pages over seven years and only draftified five. So it's certainly possible to rule it entirely and still do the job. As I say in the essay, everyone did, for the first half of NPP's history. – Joe (talk) 13:52, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hey @Joe Roe, sorry for not following up with this yesterday, it got lost in my mess of browser tabs and I got distracted.
I've thought a lot about draftspace and draftification over the years and I found it really difficult to distill those thoughts into practical advice.
– Pretty relatable....but I think one part of it at least is that draftification is rarely outright wrong, it's just also rarely the best option.
– I appreciate you acknowledging that and I think it's a better way to frame the issue as opposed to "never draftify" and I expect to use this line of thinking in discussions in the future.- Could you elaborate a bit more on the upcoming events situation? My understanding was we'd treat upcoming events as we would a regular event, largely focused on evaluating SIGCOV. What do you think about draftifying an entirely unsourced article after, let's say, a day in mainspace? AfD is not cleanup and I believe, in 2023, we shouldn't have new articles entering the main space that are wholly unsourced. I think it's a good middle ground in those situations, so long as the user is notified of the page being moved to draftspace. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
- Well I'm distinguishing here between what people can do and what I think they should do. People can draftify in the wide range of circumstances outlined by WP:DRAFTIFY, and realistically some people always will. But if someone asks me for advice on what they should do, it's "never draftify".
- Upcoming events as in where you have say a new article on next year's XXIVth Pan-Universal Games, and there isn't any coverage yet, but there definitely will be because it's a major event in a series and there always is. Long-standing practice has to been to draftify these even though they're technically not notable, so as not waste time deleting something that will inevitably be recreated in the near future.
- I understand that most people don't think it's acceptable to create unsourced articles in mainspace. And I agree, of course. However, it doesn't follow that draftification is the best way to deal with them. For one, I firmly believe that our job as new page reviewers is to enforce a broadly-conceived reading of the community's expectations of new pages, not our own ideas, and there isn't actually any policy or guideline forbidding the creation of articles without references. There have been attempts to create one, and they have failed. It is not fair to punish article creators, especially new ones, for not following a rule that they won't find written anywhere in all the pages of instructions we ask them to read. Secondly, even if we all agree that lack of references is a problem, where is it most likely to be fixed? In draftspace, where only the creator, a few pressed-upon AfC reviewers, and six months later an admin processing G13s will look at it? Or in mainspace, open to patrolling gnomish editors and to the rest of the world, with a big orange banner saying "this article doesn't have references, please fix it!"? Finally, we have to consider that most unsourced articles are created by new editors, and they're out most precious resource. I can't put it better than WhatamIdoing did:
We need new editors more than we need the endorphin rush of insta-reverting an uncited but probably accurate contribution. We need new editors more than we need to make things convenient for us. We need new editors to feel like they can be successful more than we need to get rid of subjects with borderline notability.
– Joe (talk) 13:15, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
This was helpful, thanks! and I've added the essay to this page. NotAGenious (talk) 05:56, 21 December 2023 (UTC)