Wikipedia:Processing drafts with duplicate titles

This page consists of suggestions on how to process drafts with duplicate titles. Such drafts are placed in Category:AfC submissions with the same name as existing articles and they can be dealt with using the recommendations on this page.

On October 14, 2018, Articles for creation reviewer Robert McClenon made a suggestion to "edit the draft, and replace it with a redirect to the article." Fellow reviewer Kvng, three days later, stated that "I don't think this is a good thing to do because when the author goes to check the status of their draft upon receiving decline notification on their user talk page, they will be WP:ASTONISHED when they are quietly redirected to the mainspace article. I think leaving the draft in declined state makes it more clear to everyone what has happened."

Article better than draft
When the draft is the same as the article in mainspace with the same author and the article is of good quality:

Draft better than article
When the draft is of better quality than the article in mainspace:

Both aren't good
When both the draft and the article in mainspace aren't of good quality:

Different subjects
When the article's title is the same as the draft's but the article is about a different subject:

Different content with same author
When both the draft and the article in mainspace are different by content but have the same name:

Different content with different authors
When the draft and the article in mainspace are about the same subject but have different content and authors:

Disambiguation page
When the article in mainspace is a disambiguation page:

Redirect
When the article in mainspace is a redirect about the draft's subject: