Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Archive 45

Draft:Jesse Duke - History Question
I have a question about how to deal with a draft which has a redirect with the same title. Draft:Jesse Duke is about a nineteenth-century editor. There is a redirect from Jesse Duke to The Dukes of Hazzard for a fictional character. However, there was previously an article about the character, which was then merged into the show and cut down to a redirect. So the question is: If the draft is to be accepted because the historical person is considered notable, is there any particular way that I need to request the history be retained? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:50, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If you don't have the "page mover" user-right, instead of "accepting" the draft, put it "under review," move the existing redirect to something else like Jesse Duke (Dukes of Hazzard) or something like that, fix up any incoming links or wait for a bot to do it for you, then ask an admin to delete the leftover redirect, then accept the page.
 * If you do have "page mover" then do the same, but move the Jesse Duke to Jesse Duke (Dukes of Hazzard) or whatever without leaving a redirect, fix up the incoming links manually (a bot won't do it for you, sorry), then accept the draft.
 * When all is said and done, put a hatnote on the accepted draft so people looking for the Dukes of Hazzard character aren't lost. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs) 🎄  03:58, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Please note that Robert McClenon does have the page mover right. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me!  13:03, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Script now checks for existing WikiProjects
If WikiProject banners have already been added to the draft's talk page, the "accept" page will now have those banners already in the dropdown box. Removing them from the dropdown and then accepting the draft will remove those banners from the talk page. This also works for WikiProject Biography. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:48, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice! Primefac (talk) 22:52, 1 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Yay! &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Page patrols
I've been doing new page patrols, and I've seen several accepted Articles for Creation in the new pages queue. Has there been previous discussion of automatically marking these as patrolled? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:12, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * A few, with the intention of not marking them as patrolled. The thought is that we're here to keep the obviously notable stuff out of the article space, but there's a fair amount of leeway (we say "50/50 chance of surviving AFD", which means that some of them might get sent to AFD). Primefac (talk) 20:27, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Unqualified page reviewer
It appears User:Sonofstar is has decided to review articles. They make some helpful, but some unhelpful edits. They seem too fresh an editor to be making the best edits on new articles. Perhaps someone could mentor them? Thriley (talk) 19:39, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

No changes since last decline
Is there or could there be a template response for when no substantial changes have been made between the last time an article was declined and it being resubmitted? (here's a recent example). I'd like to get across the points that 1. the original reason for it being declined still stands. 2. hoping for a more lenient reviewer isn't a good tactic. 3. don't do that. And I think it would be helpful to have some boilerplate text for this plus it could create a category to keep track of this and identify if anyone does this more than once in which case a different approach will be needed. --Paul &#10092;talk&#10093; 15:19, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's frequent enough to merit a boilerplate decline, and it's easy enough to do a custom decline with No significant changes since last decline. Primefac (talk) 17:45, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Deletable accepted submissions
I'm a new page reviewer and I'm seeing a troubling amount of articles that don't seem likely to survive AfD, for example Bay of Bengal (band). The article, as written, doesn't contain any indications of notability, no charts, no sales, no awards, no influence on other musicians, nothing.

A section just above suggested that you are accepting drafts with a 50/50 shot of getting kept at AfD. In my view, this needs to be moved to an 80 or 90% chance of surviving an AfD. Not because of workload on other editors, but because for a new editor to follow the rules and get approved, and then get their article deleted after the first new page patrol, is a huge betrayal to this new editor that will ensure that they never come back. Acceptance shouldn't be 50% acceptance, it should be acceptance period. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think this is a fine approve. There are several references that appear to be legit news articles and are specifically about the band, and it is difficult for non-Bengali-speaking AFC reviewers (i.e. most AFC reviewers) to assess the references that would likely establish notability (or search for more references in addition to those supplied). It would be better for a draft like this to get the attention of the broader community via AFD rather than have one AFC reviewer be judge, jury, and executioner. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that User:Oiyarbepsy raises an interesting question, which has to do with new editor retention. There are several possible ways that an editor can become discouraged: having their draft declined with nothing but a decline; having their draft declined with a statement as to what needs to be done; having their draft declined with a dismissive comment; having their draft accepted and then deleted, having their draft accepted, nominated for deletion, and kept.  I may comment more on those possibilities shortly.  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:27, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have a question. If a draft is accepted, and is then nominated for deletion, will the reviewer be notified so that they can defend the article?  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:27, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * They sure should be, but it's not automatic. The only automatic notification is the original creator of the page, which isn't always the creator of the article (such as redirects changed to articles) Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:30, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Freddie McSwain Jr.
I am not sure about Draft:Freddie McSwain Jr.. I am leaning towards accepting it but would like another opinion on it. Eyebeller 12:40, 12 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't see how he would meet WP:NBASKETBALL, so it's a question of whether he meets WP:GNG. RealGM is indiscriminate, they aim to have stats on all basketball players, so it doesn't indicate notability. Sports Illustrated Indiana is a solid source. Indiana University Athletics is not arms length, they have a vested interest in promoting him. I'm not sure whether Hoosier State of Mind has a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. It combines information from a National Basketball League of Canada press release, McSwain's tweet, some background information on the league, and a single sentence about McSwain, "In 62 games with the Hoosiers, McSwain Jr averaged 3.5 points, 3.5 rebounds and 11.6 minutes per game over his career." I don't believe it amounts to significant coverage. The single independent, reliable, secondary source that contains significant coverage of McSwain is Sports Illustrated Indiana, and on its own that isn't enough to demonstrate notability. If the author disagrees, they're welcome to move it back to article space themselves and accept the risk of it being taken to AfD and deleted. --Worldbruce (talk) 13:23, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah. I didn't notice that Indiana University Athletics wouldn't be an independent source. I'll go ahead and decline it then.  Eyebeller  13:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Tagishsimon's recent AfC reviewing
Recently I've become a little concerned that Tagishsimon's review comments are coming across as bite-y, and at 's discretion I'm bringing it up here. There have also been a few comments on Tagishsimon's talk page which also bring this up at and  by the author of one of the drafts, as well as by me and, although they have not yet replied there. The two actual comments being discussed, and that I want to bring to the attention of you all, can be found and. Perryprog (talk) 21:17, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to help at Draft talk:CalFile. WP:BITE is not the right description, I'd call it hostile. At least they have gone quiet. Maybe someone is having a bad day. ~Kvng (talk) 00:30, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm one of the participants in that conversation. I've had some "bad days" recently  since that which we all wish never happened as I assume we all have. I've also "gone quiet" on that page since my 2 edits earlier this week. If I've been bitey or hostile, please talk to be about it on my talk page.  If I need to apologize to anyone, I will.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  14:53, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , I don't personally think those edits were bitey or hostile. They didn't use intensifying language, and only described the article as reading like an advert. Perryprog (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to call it a bad day—I know firsthand that I can be unintentionally hostile (usually in the "real" world, though) when I'm stressed or have skipped a meal. I do feel like some acknowledgement that this was the case would be helpful here, but so far I have seen nothing to this effect. It also appears to me that the author of Draft:CalFile was potentially upset by the comments made, yet there has also been no response to them, either. Perryprog (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have been working with the CalFile author. They didn't find Tagishsimon's comments helpful or just but have not made a stink about it and continue to work on the draft. ~Kvng (talk) 20:59, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Dolaana Khovalyg
Hello, I'm hoping for a bit of guidance about this submission for an academic. I'm leaning towards declining it because it doesn't meet WP:GNG, nor does it meet WP:NACADEMIC (online sources refer to her as an assistant professor, falling short of point 5 - The person has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon)). However, the same submitter (who is paid by EPFL) has a significant number of other articles which have passed AfC after review by a reviewer far more experienced than I: Raffaella Buonsanti, David Suter (biologist) and Alexander Mathis are three examples that I would not have approved. I've been overly harsh with submissions in the past, as other Wikipedians have pointed out, and I'm not looking to make that mistake again. I've marked the article under review, and I'm hoping someone can give me their opinions on this and the other three similar articles, so that I don't mistakenly decline a worthy article. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 06:03, 3 January 2021 (UTC) CE'd comment at 06:04, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think in this case you'd be correct to decline; there are zero independent source that also talk about her in any detail, and I similarly do not see any indication that WP:PROF has been met. Primefac (talk) 12:39, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, much appreciated! Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 14:08, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You should not be reviewing academics unless you have some idea of how to look at citation counts. David Suter (biologist), Raffaella Buonsanti and Alexander Mathis all meet WP:PROF #1 in spades, and would be extremely unlikely to be deleted at AfD. Draft:Dolaana Khovalyg does not meet WP:PROF #1, and there is nothing else obvious in the article that would pass. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:09, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation, . Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 08:32, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Draft: Tomos Roberts
Hello - I apologize, in advance, if this isn't the correct venue for asking the following question... Is there a way to determine approximately when a submitted draft may be reviewed? I was told that it could take 3+ months, however it may happen far sooner in some cases? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Ryan (Ryancoke2020 (talk) 05:47, 13 January 2021 (UTC))
 * Drafts are reviewed in no particular order, which means a draft has just as much chance of being reviewed in ten minutes as it does being reviewed in ten days. That being said, the two most-reviewed areas are at the front of the queue (newly-submitted drafts) and the oldest drafts; the middle of the pack tends to largely remain unchanged. Hope this helps. Primefac (talk) 10:49, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Can I publish someone else's article that was submitted to AfC?
Firstly, I would like to state that I believe that I meet the criteria to become an AfC reviewer; however, I have no interest in becoming a reviewer full-time. Secondly, this is the draft article in question, which has been submitted to AfC: Draft:Future_State. My question: would it be OK for me to bypass the AfC process and just go ahead and publish this article myself, even though it was written and submitted to AfC by someone else? If I had written this article myself, I would have published it straightaway without going through the AfC process. I believe that it currently contains adequate information and sources, covers a notable subject, and can be expanded upon in mainspace as necessary. It has been lingering in the AfC queue since October, and covers a current event (a comic event series that is being published right now), which is why I would like to accelerate its publication. Please let me know if this is something that I can do, as I don't want to step on any toes here. Thanks. Wilkinswontkins (talk) 16:46, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If feel comfortable taking responsibility for the draft skipping the AFC process, you are allowed to move that draft to the article space (there is nothing that mandates a draft go through our process). If you do this, however, please make sure to clean up all AFC-related templates and make sure that the page is properly categorized etc. Primefac (talk) 10:51, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, I will do that. Wilkinswontkins (talk) 13:33, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

How should we handle redirects?
Please see the discussion here. Primefac (talk) 02:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Question time!
I've recently become a probationary AfC participant, and I've already run into a few areas where I have questions that don't seem to be answered by the reviewing questions. I'm likely going to have some more questions later on (and I'll probably batch them up as well), but I figured these were important enough to get out of the way quickly. (And any criticism or comments on my reviewing thus far is of course welcomed :).) Perryprog (talk) 21:57, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) If a BLP (or anything, really) is poorly sourced—if at all—is it better to decline for notability, verifiability, or both? (Worst case being something like this, compared to something a bit better like this.)
 * 2) At what point should a draft be rejected as non-notable (or WP:NOT)?
 * 3) When is it better to decline/reject something that clearly appears to be an advertisement versus just G11-ing it?
 * Well...
 * I would say it depends. If there are no references, then decline as both  and  . If there are poor references then just.
 * Personally, I've never rejected a draft, but if there is "no way no how" that the draft will ever be acceptable, then rejection is probably suitable.
 * If the content can be cleaned up with some effort, decline as . If the page would need a fundamental rewrite, go for G11. I would also say the same for G12/copyvios - if you can leave at least two decent paragraphs after removal of the copyrighted content, decline as cv but don't tag for G12 (otherwise, go for it). Granted, if you're not sure about whether a G12 is appropriate or not, I'd rather decline a G12 and clean it up than have copyright stuff left in an article.
 * Hope this helps. Primefac (talk) 22:09, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm. For 2. my only concern is that not rejecting a clearly non-notable subject could lead to a belief opposite that of WP:AMOUNT (although that's an essay, I'm pretty sure it holds up to policy). I suppose a "kinder" way might be to wait until a submission has been declined multiple times under notability, as by that point it's pretty clear that's the issue. For 3. that two paragraph metric is actually really helpful—I'm going to keep that in mind. I also assume whenever relevant, CV revdel is desirable. And that helps a lot—thank you! Perryprog (talk) 22:17, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Always glad to be of service. Primefac (talk) 22:36, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Help page for contributing to the script
I wrote WikiProject Articles for creation/Helper script/Contributing, a guide for contributing to the helper script, as part of my bid to get AFCH featured on New Developers (which may get us a faster rate of bug fixes!). People here may also find it useful. Enterprisey (talk!) 11:25, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Draft DISPLAYTITLE template proposal
First, see Category talk:Pages with disallowed DISPLAYTITLE modifications.

Would a template mentioned in the link be helpful?

The rationale is that some draft pages needs to customize its title. Pages in the draft namespace can use  like so and it will continue to work when it is moved to the mainspace.

However, there are also a lot of drafts in the user namespace. The problem is that  cannot change the title, and quite a lot of drafts are in sandboxes, meaning the title does not contain the article name at all. The solution I have come up with for now is to simply disable  if it is not in the article namespace.

Considering that those user pages are also drafts, I think we should unify handling of  of drafts with a new template proposed in the link above, similar to Draft categories.

What do you think? – Ase1este t@lkc0ntribs 03:43, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Seems reasonable. I would be interested in knowing how many of the roughly 6k pages in the category fall into the "AFC" or similar grouping; not necessarily because I don't think it would be useful, but if we have a method for determining which pages to put some sort of namespace detect it makes coding any bot(s) easier. Primefac (talk) 12:04, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There are currently around 2100 [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=-intitle%3A%2F%5C%2F.%2F+insource%3A%2FDISPLAYTITLE%3A%5B%5E%5C%7D%5D%2A%2F+incategory%3A%22Pages+with+disallowed+DISPLAYTITLE+modifications%22&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns2=1] user pages (not subpages) in Category:Pages with disallowed DISPLAYTITLE modifications. Most of them are trying to change the username display. Few are drafts. There are around 3300 [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=intitle%3A%2F%5C%2F.%2F+insource%3A%2FDISPLAYTITLE%3A%5B%5E%5C%7D%5D%2A%2F+incategory%3A%22Pages+with+disallowed+DISPLAYTITLE+modifications%22&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns2=1] user subpages in the category. Many of them are trying to display a draft title. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:11, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

777-300 aircraft.
hello my name is I work at a company call in the US. I have being experiencing issue with aircraft a 777-300. I would like to know what are the power expectation for that particular aircraft from a GPU weather its a 129KVA or a 180KVA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.255.98.82 (talk) 19:12, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You might want to try WP:REFDESK. Primefac (talk) 19:20, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Draft declined for lacking online sources
I came across Draft:Kaely Michels-Gualtieri in the G13 deletion heap, having been abandoned after declined it essentially for lacking online versions for the key sources appertaining to notability. It's not an area I know anything about (trapeze artist) so I'm not comfortable promoting it myself, but it seems reasonably fully sourced, just without links for verification, which don't seem to me to be necessary. The creator appears single purpose but is claiming to be good faith. There's always the option of promoting the article to mainspace and then taking it to Articles for deletion to see whether the claims of notability stick. Thoughts, anyone? Espresso Addict (talk) 01:06, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Moved to mainspace Kaely Michels-Gualtieri. A quick search on a well known search engine shows that online sources also exist, and while they aren't required, it would be a tad odd for a modern entertainer to only be covered offlne.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  07:36, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, and for adding sources; good outcome! Espresso Addict (talk) 09:28, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks for pulling this out of the heap! ~Kvng (talk) 23:46, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Did the Submit button of drafts change somewhere
I've noticed that there are a lot more "undated" drafts in AFC sections that the AlertBot puts out. For example here: WikiProject_Film/Article_alerts. Did something change recently where a timestamp isn't being populated properly when a user submits a draft? -2pou (talk) 22:51, 20 January 2021 (UTC)


 * It looks like a bug in AAlertBot to me; the drafts are correctly timestamped and categorized as far as I can tell. Filed Wikipedia talk:Article_alerts/Bugs. —  The Earwig   talk 23:11, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, Category:AfC pending submissions without an age is usually empty. Primefac (talk) 15:34, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Rejection isn't always final - just almost always
There are some situations where I will change a rejection to a decline: davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  00:47, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If the rejection is based on notability, and the notability of the topic has actually changed from "clearly not notable" to "likely enough to be notable to not reject for lack of notability." That actor nobody ever heard of has the starring role in a surprise-blockbuster movie, etc. It happens.
 * If the rejection is based on an apparent lack of notability, and new evidence comes to light that points towards the topic being notable, then the rejection should be changed. This can happen if someone does a poor job of drafting and the topic doesn't have many online English-language sources.
 * The rejections was clearly in error. I've made mistakes in AFC reviews before and I probably will again. I hope if I do a "clearly mistaken rejection" an hour before starting a week-long WikiBreak, another reviewer would be willing to "un-reject it" if the author requests a second look and makes a credible case that the rejection was in error.
 * Because rejection invariably ends further work on a draft - functionally equivalent to unilateral deletion, without even the "second opinion" of a speedy deletion - I think any rejection for lack of notability should require a proper WP:BEFORE search for sources. I still see far too many invalid rejections for spurious reasons, perhaps we need to implement a "second opinion" mechanism for rejections, so that they at least get the same level of scrutiny as a speedy deletion. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:38, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I like that, and it could be implemented without any code changes, simply by adopting a convention of the first "rejecting reviewer" using AFC comment to say why he would reject it, then the second reviewer doing a "normal" rejection. (That said, if this practice is adopted, we should change the script to make our lives easier) davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  01:12, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If we can get more reviewers watching User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon we'd be able to correct a broad-range of reviewer mistakes. With a broader solution available, I'm not enthusiastic about implementing individual procedures to solve individual problems. ~Kvng (talk) 16:50, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Bear in mind that this doesn't cover all G13s, only the ones that haven't been touched by a bot during the 6 months. All the ones I've been seeing in the speedy queue are bot edited and afaik don't appear here. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:11, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I would like to add a comment about people who become notable, or become possibly notable. That is a reason to be cautious in rejecting a draft BLP on notability grounds.  I suggest asking whether, based on what is said in the draft, there is a possibility that the subject could become notable within the next six months.  If the answer is that it is unlikely, but not absurdly unlikely, that is sufficient reason to decline rather than reject.  Save rejection for cases that are hopeless somehow, either tendentious resubmission, or run-of-the-mill autobiographies, but decline run-of-the-mill biographies.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:08, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Helper script bug
, can you have the script handle "Draft-specific" categories like Category:Drafts in foreign languages different from regular categories? I had to remove that category from Draft:Yükseköğretim Kalite Kurulu since the script insisted on "de-activating" it during the "clean" process.

This is probably not the only category that needs to be "treated as a special case" by the script. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  23:59, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Good idea; I'll assume it's subcategories of Category:Draft articles, and issue opened. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:10, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if this would be part of the same ticket or not, but I've noticed that when the script is used to add a comment, it's also adding a colon before draft categories, which are still presumably valid: Special:Diff/999333549. -2pou (talk) 22:56, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Added that to the ticket, thanks. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:48, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

"AFCR" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect AFCR. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 23 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 12:59, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Drafts requiring medical/scientific reviewers:
Hey, I'm not sure what the best way to highlight this is, but I noticed that there are a few drafts, (submitted around the same time by one anon) that need the attention of someone specifically familiar with Policies and RS's on medical topics. They all relate to CoVID vaccine candidates: · Draft:ARCT-021 · Draft:Zorecimeran · Draft:CoVLP They look legit and notable to me but I strongly feel like they should be reviewed by someone who knows what they are talking about. --Paul &#10092;talk&#10093; 10:41, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * in such cases dropping a note asking for help at WT:WPMED usually gets a fairly prompt response. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:46, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * will do, thanks. --Paul &#10092;talk&#10093; 10:55, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

AFD Comments
I have a few comments about comments made at AFD. I have at least three times seen the comment that the article that is tagged for deletion should not have been accepted through AFC. First, I would like to clarify that the criterion for acceptance is that the reviewer thinks that there is a greater than 50% chance that the article will be kept in AFD if it is nominated for AFD. Of course, the vast majority of articles that are accepted do not go through AFD because there is no real question about notability. What I am asking for may be a verification that having an occasional article nominated for AFD that a reviewer has accepted does not mean that the reviewer was wrong.

Second, I did recently see the same comment, that the article should not have been accepted, on an article that had not been accepted by AFC. The article had been move-warred. It had been in article space, and was sent back to draft space, and was then moved back to article space, which is the author's privilege, but subjects them to the likelihood of AFD. The commenter thought that the article had been accepted because of the stupid template message that says that the article was accepted, but the acceptance has not been closed out. I explained to the commenter that the problem was not with AFC, but was only a stupid template message.

Third, is there a way to increase the likelihood of a reviewer participating in the AFD, and possibly defending the acceptance, if an AFC article is nominated for deletion after being accepted?

Fourth, I think that the risk of being dumped on if an article is accepted and then nominated for deletion may be a reason why some drafts sit in the AFC queue for weeks or even months, because reviewers don't want to take a chance on a 50%.

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:27, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It happens all the time, and it is likely one of the reasons why there are fewer accepts than we "should have" for a project and process this large. Those people can take a dump off the back of a truck, though, because it doesn't really matter the providence of the page. The one thing I would argue (slightly in favour of their argument) is that the AFC reviewer should not then double down and say it must be notable because it went through AFC - we are not a secret cabal granting magical cannot-be-deleted status to articles. If a page gets sent to AFD, it gets sent to AFD.
 * On the "it should never have been accepted" front - I got called out on that a while ago, and I just fixed the article (though I have also gone "oops!" and moved the page back to draft before). Having a bad accept or two is not the end of the world, provided you don't make a habit of it.
 * I guess the point of my reply is... so what? People like to bitch about things, and as long as you (the reviewer) are mostly consistent, the occasional "bad accept" shouldn't be an issue. Primefac (talk) 12:24, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have seen it a few times also. Two accepts of mine were sent to AfD with that reasoning, but those two were closed as no consensus and were leaning towards keep. For less clear-cut cases, I also think of it as being an unimportant statement most of the time especially if someone is approving drafts that are deep in the backlog. SL93 (talk) 16:15, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * On that note, half the time I'll accept a draft at the back end of the queue because it's a borderline case and I'd rather have the community decide. Primefac (talk) 16:22, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It is very much the Wikipedia way to select another group of volunteers that is different from the complaining editor and dump on them for not doing enough, or for not doing what they do correctly. That does not make it a useful part of Wikipedia.  (If one think that a group of volunteers in which one does not work has the wrong emphasis, one can discuss changing the policies at Village Pump or elsewhere.  Just dumping that they aren't doing enough is empty self-relief.)  In particular, some editors dump on AFC for not doing enough.  Proposals to change the guidelines for AFC may be constructive, or just brainstorming, but are not just dumping.  That is a dump-dump; that is, I am dumping about dumping.  Robert McClenon (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2021 (UTC)


 * It is easy to take it as a huge slap of no confidence to have an article you accepted AfD-Ed, and then deleted. So, it’s natural to avoid putting oneself in that position, it is easy to pass over a borderline case.  However, better to pass over than to make an unjustified decline decision.
 * I wonder whether it would be helpful to calculate a metric on reviewers: the percent accepted drafts subsequently deleted, or sent back to draft. 50% of those AfD-ed being deleted is an awkward metric. Would 5% be a good figure?  15% means you are too generous, 2% means you are too hard.  Of course, the meaning if this metric would be affected by the choice of drafts you choose to review.  One day old predicted C class drafts are easier to pass than the tail end. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:26, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * On average (across the project), ~10% of accepted drafts are either nominated for deletion or moved back to the draft space. Of those nominated, approximately 65% are deleted. If you're referring to reviewer-specific figures, though, I don't have those; it's enough effort just to calculate the overall figures. Primefac (talk) 22:30, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Primefac - Do you know what percent of all articles that are nominated for deletion are in fact deleted? That is, does the delete rate of AFD noms depend on whether the article went through AFC or came in on their own?  Also, do you know what percent of all articles that come in on their own (in publishing lingo, over the transom; in US college sports lingo, walked in) are nominated for deletion?  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The short answer is no. If one wanted that information they could probably do some back-of-the-envelope estimations based on looking at a few days worth of AFD /Log pages; that would at least get a rough estimate of % deleted. Knowing which pages were created in article space and then nominated would involve a bit more gruntwork checking logs. Primefac (talk) 11:25, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * 10% feels like a good figure to me. For individual stats, I guess that would mean some serious scripting/coding for tracking.  I think it would be nice to know, by way of an indicator: I am being too hard/easy.
 * On when an accepted draft is AfD-ed, I suggest that the reviewer should watch but not comment. Having already made the earlier judgement, they are involved, and you can learn better by just watching. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:42, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , I'm not sure I agree with this. I think the discussion is helped when the reviewer explains their rationale for accepting. I try to end-run all of this for marginal cases by posting notes on my accept rationale to the draft's talk page. This may prevent half-cocked AfD nominations but mostly it helps me contribute productively to an AfD if it should occur. ~Kvng (talk) 17:25, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I also disagree with . Just because I've reviewed something doesn't mean I have a vested interest in it staying. It just means at one time I considered the evidence and thought it (at minimum) likely qualified to have an article and wasn't so bad (e.g. advertisement/copyvio) that having the draft as-is wasn't a net negative. I don't think it's a bad thing that articles that have gone through AFC go to AFD and even get deleted there. The standard is supposed to be 50% chance of surviving AFD, so naturally some will be AFDed and get deleted. If no AFC articles were ever deleted that would mean the standards applied in this single-reviewer process are far too high. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:56, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I remember once having to sharply explain to a highly argumentative draft submitter that they seem to be mistaking me for someone who cares about their article's existence. As a reviewer I really DGAF, all I care about is that it complies with the minimum requirements. If you find yourself caring about an article's existence you should avoid reviewing it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:02, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I also agree with User:Kvng and User:Calliopejen1 and disagree with User:SmokeyJoe. If an article that I accepted is nominated for deletion, I want to be able to make one statement explaining my acceptance.  Also, I want the AFD participants to know that I am available to comment if they ask.  Conversely, if I am a reviewer at AFD, I would like to see what the AFC reviewer says was their reasoning.  If I am a reviewer at DRV, I would like to see a follow-up statement by the closer, especially if the closer only said Delete or Keep.  Very often the AFC reviewer only says Accept with no further explanation (or Decline with only a reason from a pick list).  I think that any previous reviewers should be encouraged to make one concise explanation.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I respect the disagreements, and quite agree with Robert's last statement. I think it is consistent with what I really mean.  The AfC acceptor should consider themself involved and should: say how they are involved; explain why they accepted; be available to answer questions.  What I was thinking is that an AfC acceptor should try to not take it personally and go to the wall in defending the article from deletion.  I found myself slipping that way on my first AfC accepted AfD.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Article Creation Rights?
Hello. Recently, one of my "articles for creation" was accepted for creation. In the message left on my talk page, there was something that said "Since you have made at least 10 edits over more than four days, you can now create articles yourself without posting a request." Does that mean that I can make articles directly from draft to article without review, and does that give me the ability to review other people's articles? I would appreciate any clarification on this. Springfield2020 (talk) 15:38, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You now have the technical ability to create new articles and to WP:MOVE pages from "Draft:" to the main encyclopedia. However, you do not have access to the tools that are used by "AFC reviewers."  I strongly discourage you from attempting to "approve" or "move" drafts you did not create into the encyclopedia until you have a lot more experience editing.  I also discourage you from bypassing the AFC process for your own articles unless or until you have enough of an understanding of Wikipedia's WP:Notability and other guidelines and policies to be confident that your contribution won't wind up being deleted.  If you haven't read WP:Your first article yet, please do so.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  16:05, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Self-followup: With several months and 130 edits, you might be at a point where you have enough knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to successfully create an article or to move your own draft articles into the main encyclopedia without the risk of deletion.  That said, if you aren't confident, I would encourage you to still take advantage of the AFC process.  Yes, it introduces a delay, but it's better to get serious issues like lack of evidence of notability or serious problems with "tone" (e.g. "reads like an advertisement") hashed out before a draft becomes an article rather than after.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  16:08, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * And as a reference, I'm currently able to review AfC submissions, create articles in the mainspace, and move articles from draftspace to mainspace. Despite this, if I ever want to create an article I would still go through the AfC process. Perryprog (talk) 16:14, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I see what you guys mean. Thanks for the clarification! Springfield2020 (talk) 16:25, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * One more point: While you can technically create directly in main space or move articles from Draft to main space, those articles will still go through a separate review process called page curation where members of the WP:New page patrol will still review the article. -2pou (talk) 18:52, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT
Hallo, I'm not an AfC reviewer, but as a regular stub-sorter I see a random collection of stubs which have been moved to main space from AfC. I note that the instructions for reviewers include "Consider adding categories, and/or appropriate cleanup templates or stub-tags by entering the code in the relevant boxes.", but there seems no mention of DEFAULTSORT. This is something which could very usefully be added by an AfC reviewer, along with any categories, as it will ensure that "Annie Brown" files under B not A in any listings for those categories.

Could I suggest that some mention of DEFAULTSORT should be added to the reviewers instructions and/or the script used when accepting an article, to increase the proportion of articles which go into mainspace with their appropriate DEFAULTSORT when they need one? There are two main groups of articles where this is needed: (a) personal names where the filing element is not the first part of the name (as is the case for most western names, where we expect "Annie Brown" to file as "Brown, Annie" and (b) titles which start with "A", "An", "The" or foreign-language equivalents, so that "The Gambia" will file as "Gambia, The".

Some of these will at present get noticed by alert stub-sorters who notice misplaced items in the A-Z display of Category:Stubs, but not every item approved at AfC is a stub and so will pass before that next pair of eyes. Pam D  21:48, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , the script (AFCH) will add a default sort tag for any biographies when accepting, although it might make sense to have a comment noting that in the review instructions. If necessary I can expand further when I’m not on a phone. Perryprog (talk) 22:05, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, User:Perryprog, thanks for the info: that's good news., could you perhaps use this while accepting (re User_talk:Bkissin). Thanks. Pam  D  22:21, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Just doing a gut-check here - is removal of AFC history while in draft disruptive?
My gut says "it is disruptive, particularly if the editor is aware of the reasons they should stay," but I wanted to check with my peers before taking further action regarding this and my response to it on the editor's talk page.

Short version: The editor twice removed AFC declines and/or comments. I restored both in a single edit and left a note on his talk page saying why. He removed them both again.

So, is my gut correct, or is it off-base? davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  17:01, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , as far as I know, they shouldn't ever be removed unless a review becomes irrelevant (e.g., a decline for a copyright violation when it was reverse copyvio). The decline box does also say please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Perryprog (talk) 17:05, 29 January 2021 (UTC)


 * It says "Do not remove this line!" for a reason - it's usually just trying to game the system and defo disruptive. If they keep doing it they obviously don't want to use AfC as designed so they become a candidate for MfD. KylieTastic (talk) 18:37, 29 January 2021 (UTC)


 * No need to get reactive. WP:AGF and just revert those deletions. ~Kvng (talk) 15:51, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Personal AfC stats
Is there a tool in place to see how many AfC reviews I've done? either just a total headcount or a breakdown of how often I accept/decline (I'd be interested to see how I compare to the averages)? --Paul &#10092;talk&#10093; 11:58, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. Primefac (talk) 16:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi Paul you can use Quarry to look into Wikipedia edits etc - for example I've just updated these for you last 24 hours, last 7 days and last month (Daily review counts). Hope that helps KylieTastic (talk) 16:12, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a future feature for the AFC Helper Script will include per-user, userspace-based, opt-in logging like WP:Twinkle and some other tools do. That will give you something to analyze.  without having to rely on non-deleted drafts davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  16:15, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that quarry report is great - it's nice to know that I'm accepting articles at a pretty average rate --Paul &#10092;talk&#10093; 18:13, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Tracked. Enterprisey (talk!) 23:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Amy-Charlotte Devitz or the Bendy Biologist
For those unaware, there are currently six drafts in the space for the same person:
 * Draft:Amy-Charlotte Devitz
 * Draft:Amy-Charlotte Devitz ("The Bendy Biologist") (G11)
 * Draft:Amy - Charlotte Devitz (not yet submitted]]
 * Draft:Amy charlotte devitz
 * Draft:Summary on American Biologist Amy-Charlotte Devitz
 * Draft:Amy-Charlotte Devitz: Female Scientist and Disability Advocate

, and  have taken care of several of these drafts already. Thank you all. My thought is that this is a coordinated WP:PROMO campaign by a number of different users, especially with the hashtags used in this particular draft. While the subject might have a compelling case for WP:NPROF, I haven't seen anything in these drafts that has shown Independent GNG notability. Many of the sources are from her own website, etc. and the tone is classically promotional and reads like a youtube channel than an actual article.

Just wanted to keep other reviewers on the radar about the issue. Bkissin (talk) 21:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)


 * My reading of these is that Amy-Charlotte Devitz is a great person, and has acquired a fan club, and/or, has been assigned to some students for the writing of a Wikipedia article. If Charlotte is at all personally involved in any of this, I would like to invite her to register an account, she would be a highly valuable Wikipedian.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:51, 2 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Definitely going to need a couple more reliable sources to reach notability levels, but this isn't a bad start. Here's what a quick search found me:
 * This young scientist studies wild animals. Bias against disability won’t stop her, PBS NewsHour
 * Inclusivity for all: How to make your research group accessible, Science Magazine
 * Decent high level publications there. 2 or 3 more like that or 5 or 6 from some lower level publications and we'd be in business. Silver  seren C 07:17, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have tagged three of the drafts to be merged into Draft:Amy-Charlotte Devitz. One of them was a one-sentence stub, and I have redirected it to the principal draft.  The members of her fan club should work on one draft.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:29, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have Welcomed the editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:36, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

350+ drafts today? What happened?
How are there 350+ drafts in the 0 day old submissions? Did someone go on a saving spree at G13? Even with all our volunteers we can't keep up with the backlog. Bkissin (talk) 20:48, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * We had trouble keeping up with the backlog as it is. I tried to look through the newly added drafts, but I can't find out how this happened. SL93 (talk) 20:51, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, that's something. BD2412  T 21:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I looked at a couple dozen drafts and they all appear to be "regular" submissions. This is weird, but probably just a coincidence. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 21:37, 27 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I've been trying to churn through the new subs and they do all appear to be independent so maybe just a coincidence of slightly more submits and slightly less reviewing... Although it's not helped by FloridaArmy submitting loads of just 1-2 line minimal stubs - even if many technically notable under WP:NPOL - I do wish there was a minimum length standard as these just water down the worth of an encyclopedia. Also from this search it would suggest they have 125 active submissions! (assuming no one is resubmitting ones they have submitted before) KylieTastic (talk) 13:37, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I do wish there was a minimum length standard as these just water down the worth of an encyclopedia. History lesson: In the days before Encarta, there were these things called "encyclopedias." Unlike the modern encyclopedia, these usually took up several feet of shelf space.  On the plus side, they did not require electricity to access.  They included one-liner entries. There was and may still be a thing called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which, while taking up much less shelf space, also includes one-liners.  At one time, the entry for Earth was two words: Mostly harmless.  Prior to that, it was just one word:  Harmless. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  02:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I was lucky enough to grow up in a house with a full set, and my folks still have them. I don't remember them being full of one liners. Also as you say it was already a ridiculous size (and cost) so not practical to have longer entries for everything. Also it usually only takes a little more effort to add to most of FAs submissions, so along with the typos, several errors, unsourced material they really are the absolute minimum of effort. KylieTastic (talk) 14:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that's what drives me crazy the most about their drafts is the minimum amount of effort put in. I understand wanting to highlight marginalized communities within Wikipedia, but I would argue that that is done through articles of high quality, not high quantity. When I create new articles, I try to follow these same standards of quality and it's just frustrating when not only does someone not do the same, but that asking for more effort can often get one criticized as part of some conspiracy to keep down communities of color. Bkissin (talk) 21:15, 1 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Anyway... I think I found the issue. The articles are just listed in the wrong categories. I assume something used to do null edits and has stopped - anyone know what bot/user did that task? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 14:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Found it User:Joe's Null Bot and the issue is know and awaiting a fix.... I'll do a semi-manual null edit run to tidy things up. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 14:47, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I didn't notice that is an old notice on that bot and Joe Decker is not active.... I looked at maybe another bot has been doing this task? Unfortunate as doing null edits leaves no trace - I looked at WP:BRFA and apart from a denied request DannyS712 bot 26 when the bot stopped working before I can see nothing else, so looks like it was User:Joe's Null Bot and it has just stopped working. KylieTastic (talk) 11:23, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

TfD for Template:Drafting and Template:Talkspace draft
See Templates for discussion/Log/2021 February 4. They were unused; this simplifies the helper script code a bit. Enterprisey (talk!) 23:35, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Request to be added as a reviewer for the AfC process
Partizan Kuzya (talk) 01:46, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Partizan Kuzya please see WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 16:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Lesbian Island Been a while...
It's been a while since I had an editor loose their mind over a decline - not sure why they are just attacking me as Theroadislong declined if just after. So far 14 abusive messages on my talk page from account and IP, and zero attempts to improve article. Not close to the record yet of waking up to notices of over a hundred posts (most redacted) about me... oddly that was from the same part of the world. Ah the joys of Wikipedia :/ KylieTastic (talk) 16:04, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just surprised this doesn't happen more often. And we could always spam some message to Theroadislong so they don't feel left out. ;) — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 16:09, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Two absolutely non-free/copyvio images, no less. Regardless, I hope you know your work is very appreciated, KylieTastic. Perryprog (talk) 16:14, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Would that be my work on Wikipedia or as a "dirty sluut foot licker" ;) KylieTastic (talk) 16:18, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Phew just checked the history of the abuse...appalling, chin up keep going. Theroadislong (talk) 16:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To be honest this was just sad and easy to shrug off (although in general the state of humanity recently has been depressing). Only once did it take a couple of days to shake off because that was so vile many were redacted/deleted, if I remember correctly a lot of posts containing violent personal threats against me and my family, most more childish like this, but they used dozens of accounts and IPs hence a lot of my users pages got protected :/ KylieTastic (talk) 16:50, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you like, I'll cobble together a bot that will randomly put insults on your talk page. Would you like it to have configurable parameters like mindelay, maxdelay, maxinsultsperday or should I just surprise you?  (no, this is NOT a serious offer) davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  16:25, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * lol - I can see this being of help for many editors who feel they are missing out - you have have a template to add to your user page then the bot randomly sends a joke insult. I'm thinking Monty Python style like "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!". :) KylieTastic (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A bot would never be approved, but a template that used "switch" and digits from the timestamp of the last edit to some frequently-edited page and the last edit of your user talk page might be a good substitute. People who feel they need insulting can put it at the top of their talk page, just so they don't feel left out.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  16:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't feel so left out now . Theroadislong (talk) 17:13, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And another sock :/ - I now feel sorry for Andjela.bonapart who probably has been getting notifications for all this crap if they are actually signing this junk. KylieTastic (talk) 17:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * approve_price — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 17:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I can take being called a "dirty sluut foot licker" but how dare they suggest my morals are so cheep that I would accept just $200 to approve junk! KylieTastic (talk) 17:27, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I charge ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS, donated to the Wikimedia Foundation of course. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  17:49, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I cobbled together a poor-man's template you can subst: on your user or talk page for a very-quasi- kinda-random-message-generator: Template:coinflip. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  17:53, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , random number and random item might be better and less expensive. Perryprog (talk) 18:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  18:56, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2021
Change WikiProject Articles for creation/Add WikiProject tags to undo the last edit, seems to be a mistake. 74.73.230.232 (talk) 23:34, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done, thanks. Perryprog (talk) 23:43, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

About to hit 3RR for restoring AFC templates
I've restored AFC templates 3 times in the last 24 hours on Draft:Imaztv.

Is there a consensus somewhere that restoring these templates doesn't count for 3RR/edit-warring purposes, or do I need to lay off for a day? davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  19:15, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The AFC decline templates are part of our processes, and I would consider it disruptive editing to continually remove it despite the "do not remove this line" note, and I think you could make the argument per WP:3RRNO #8 that this template is placed there "by community consensus"; i.e. you restoring it is a return to consensus and thus is exempt.
 * In this particular instance, I've blocked them for a promotional name and promotional edits. Primefac (talk) 19:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * AfC templates are extremely ugly, both on the draft and in the edit window. Removing them is completely understandable.  Nearly all of the AfC templates, especially the messages, should go on the talk page. Where is the community consensus that messages should go on the top of the draft?  Comments on the wiki page proper, 2001 style, was abandoned as soon as possible, with the invention of the talk page, for very good reason. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:38, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, that's where the tool puts them and it's been that way for years, so I would call that a de facto consensus. However, if you think they should be moved, then maybe a new discussion should be started.  Courtesy ping  since he maintains the script. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  20:44, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed; we have been putting AFC templates on the draft itself for years now. As gets stated every time the whole "we can't have anything except a draft on the draft" complaint comes up - these get removed upon acceptance, and they are a very quick and easy way to see how a draft has progressed. Primefac (talk) 20:47, 7 February 2021 (UTC) I know you want reform, SmokeyJoe, but continually trying to hijack discussions is not the way to do it.
 * I call it stubborn inflexibility, and I call insisting on it by blocking for other crimes to be bullying. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you note the block log, I blocked for promotional edits by a promotional username. The not-quite-3RR had nothing to do with it. Primefac (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You and I can see that, but it can be misread as “remove the AfC taggery and you might be blocked”. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:20, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I prefer the templates being on the top of the draft page. It's ugly as heck and can quickly become very obtrusive, but the audience that is going through AfC is very unlikely to understand the draftpage/talkpage separation. I think it's very important to make sure that users—especially new ones—understand why their draft was declined, without having to hunt for it. I worry that a change to the current system could lead to more people either resubmitting without improvements or simply not understanding why something was declined. Perryprog (talk) 20:56, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Pretending that newcomers writing new pages on new topics don’t need to understand the purpose and function of talk pages is foolish. That means assuming they never look a articles and how the talk pages of articles are used to discuss article improvements. Very backwards, 2001-2002 as I said. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:20, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Normal looking Wikipedia tags are concise, and can point to further explanation on the talk page. AfC tags embed sometimes very poor quality comments, and it is very unclear how the drafter is supposed to respond, if they are invited to respond at all.  Many seem to think that to respond is done by repressing the submit button.  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:22, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It should not fall under 3RR, this isn't a content dispute, this is usually disruptive editing as maintenance and XfD template are part of the established process. I don't think anyone would consider this a 3RR violation even if its not strictly-speaking codified. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 21:29, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Where AFC Messages Go
First, I mostly agree with User:SmokeyJoe that putting those messages on the talk page would be preferable. It isn't that important where they are while the draft ia a draft. Second, what I think is more important is that there should be a way to move comments to the talk page when the draft is accepted, because some of the comments have to do with editing of the article that the draft becomes. If the title of a draft has been disambiguated, I put a comment on it saying that an entry needs to be added to the disambiguation list when the draft is accepted. That comment has to do with editing of the article, not just with whether to accept the article. Third, if comments are removed from a draft while it is in progress, the reviewer should use judgment as to whether it matters, whether the messages should be restored for future reviewers. In some cases, removing the templates may be an indication of a conflict of interest, and there are at least two ways to address that concern, by posting a question on the user talk page, and by posting a note at the conflict of interest noticeboard.

We should at least discuss moving the messages and the comments to the talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, if we are going to change anything, how about having a section on the talk page called "Articles for creation" which is transcluded into the top of the draft. Once the page is accepted, the transclusion is removed and the talk-page section is marked with archive top and collapse top.  That will require not only consensus, but a partial rewrite of the AFCH script. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  18:50, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Why transclude? If you think the drafter doesn’t understand talk pages, how are they going to understand transclusions?  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:35, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that User:davidwr means to automatically display the AFC log on the front of the draft. (I consider the talk page of any article or project page to be the back.)  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:22, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think a very concise AfC log, log of declines and rejects, would be good transcluded on the top of the draft. Ideally, each log entry would link to a fresh section on the talk page, which would include the explanation.  It is the explanations and any advice that I think is inappropriate for the draft page proper.  Explanations and comments may or may not be relevant only to particular versions, and should always be allowed to be responded to, which is not how the wiki works if it is not on the talk page.  Signed comments should not be on that draft proper, but on the draft talk page, and any signed comment should be in simple wikimarkup, not templated, so that a newcomer can reasonably reply.
 * If the AfC log is agreed to belong on the draft page, then it should be there, not transcluded there. Transclusions are not simple for newcomers to understand.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:31, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Removing Messages from User Talk page
I rejected a draft, and went back about 12 hours later to check on it. I saw that the submitter had erased the rejection message from their talk page. On the one hand, they have a right to do this, because it is their user talk page, and it doesn't really matter as long as they aren't resubmitting the draft. On the other hand, is there any particular reason to expect that they did this? What is the good-faith or bad-faith explanation? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Removing from their own talk page is fine - some editors routinely remove all messages once they are read. Removing it from the draft itself, which isn't what you said this editor did, would be a problem, see the discussion about 3RR above. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  18:46, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Removing tags from the draft, when dealt with, should be fine. If the tag is a message, removing the message tag when read, should be considered ok.  The draft header is no place for the history.  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:38, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Removing tags from the draft - um, are we talking about the same thing here? IMHO all AFC templates on drafts, including past rejections, declines, and comments, are for the benefit of all editors who are working on the page while it is still a draft, so they should not be removed unless they were added in error or based on erroneous information/assumptions. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  20:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There’s a fundamental confusion here, isn’t there. What is the purpose of the tag? If it is conversation, it should go on the talk page. If it is not conversation, it should be removed when dealt with.  AfC putting messages on the top of the draft is a remnant of when drafts were subpages of WT:AfC, and how long ago was that?  Reform?  Put talk on the talk page? That was a 2001 wiki reform. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:00, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What the user did was to remove the rejection message from the user talk page. We agree that they have the right to do this.  Some editors are selective in what they remove their talk pages, and it seems that they remove anything that reflects on them adversely.  If I determine that an editor has been doing that, I become a little less patient.  That is the sort of editor for whom the statement that AGF is not a suicide pact applies.  My question had been whether there are any other conclusions to be drawn from removing the rejection message from the user talk page.  It doesn't really matter as long as the rejected draft is removed from AFC.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:29, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello Admins please help me to complete my first article draft:junaid_bhat
Hello Admins hope you all are doing good, i'm new here on wikepedia i don't have too much knowledge about the rules of wikipedia , i have just started contributing on wikipedia as someday's before i went through a Draft:junaid_bhat which was declined because it was totally incomplete and there were not enough supportive url's in the draft , so while checking this draft i went through internet and collected the information regarding the mentioned person and took this draft as my first contribution on wikipedia so i started recreating this draft which is complete now and has been sent for submission : please i request you to help me to get my first work published thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prakrutiprajapanti (talk • contribs) 19:25, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello. This page is for discussing the operation of the Articles for Creation process only; it is not for help requests.  For that, you should go to WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk.  I would suggest that before you go there that you take some time to learn more about Wikipedia by using the new user tutorial and reading Your First Article.  Successfully writing a new article is the absolute hardest task to perform on Wikipedia, and it is good to get some knowledge and even some experience editing existing articles first, to get a feel for how Wikipedia operates. 331dot (talk) 19:39, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

AFCH handling of Category:Drafts in foreign languages
The AFCH script de-activates the "draft-space" category Category:Drafts in foreign languages. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  21:12, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, nobody's gotten to https://github.com/WPAFC/afch-rewrite/issues/131 yet. It's not too complicated, actually, so I might be able to get away with having a new developer do it. (I've been getting a stream of new developers ever since I put this project on the GSoC landing page; the first bug fixed through that effort should be making its way to the script shortly. The new-contributor experience is getting pretty good these days, if anyone else wants to help out.) Enterprisey (talk!) 10:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

AFC Comment template issue
AFC comment has a parameter "2=note" which is almost useful. The problem is that cleaning the submission, potentially making further comments or declinig the draft, duplicates the instance with this parameter deployed.

I imagine that this is true with "1=Why" as well, though have not used that ever.

I chose not to place exmples here since the template documentation is reasonably clear.

There are two solutions. Either remove that/those parameter/s from the template (there are then small legacy deployment issues) or solve the problem wuth the duplication.

I may be the only reviewer in recent times to have attempted use of the additional parameter(s). If so I see removing them as the simplest route, small legacy issues notwithstanding. Fiddle  Faddle  08:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Let's find out how often it's used. If the answer is "hardly ever" then I don't see any reason why it cannot be removed from the functionality. As a side note, I suspect it's not used that often because AFCH doesn't actually give you the option to input the second param. Primefac (talk) 16:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , ignoring my own sandbox (irrelevant) ten drafts at the present time suggests to me that the optional parameters can disappear with no true downside. Fiddle   Faddle  17:19, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The most common use is by individuals to reply to reviews. This is rare. Otherwise  and I seem to be the only reviewers to have current examples in use.  Fiddle   Faddle  17:25, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Timtrent That is interesting. Did I use that field?  Was I using it for a reason, or was I diddling with it?  Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I noticed it and think you had a useful reason for it. I skimmed through Category:AFC drafts using comment template with second parameter and yours was the only name I noticed that I was familiar wuth as a reviewer.  E&OE!  Fiddle   Faddle  18:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , on Draft:Garrett Gerloff you entered  – of course, now it just says "Comment" rather than that. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:08, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The AFC Comment thing is almost always inserted into the history of a draft by the reviewer pressing the yellow Comment button, and that just enters the text entered by the reviewer. This does of course provide the reviewer with the opportunity to break things accidentally with mismatched brackets or braces.  (I have known for more than fifty years that mismatched parentheses or brackets cause trouble.  That doesn't prevent doing it by accident.  It only means that I have more than half a century of experience in knowing that that causes parsing errors.)  Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Removed. If anyone has issue let me know. I'll leave the tracking cat for a while longer just to see if anyone starts/restarts/etc using the param. Primefac (talk) 18:39, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That was interesting. I had tagged Draft:Garrett Gerloff to be merged into the stub article at Garrett Gerloff.  A few days later the content of the draft was merged into the article, which is what I had requested.  I have replaced the draft with a redirect to the article.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:31, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Being unfamiliar with the helper script, I wasn't understanding the issue until I looked at 's edit history.
 * the comment was initially added with this script-assisted edit.
 * a second, manual edit added the second parameter.
 * with this edit, the script-assisted edit duplicated the comment. Is that a bug in the script?
 * the duplicated comment wasn't noticed until a bit later, when it was removed.
 * it was duplicated a second time by this script-assisted edit, then removed again just before this report was filed.
 * the second parameter was added on 21 March 2019 per request by User:DannyS712 at Template talk:AfC comment.
 * I see that the helper script has been around since 2013. Were the developers notified when the second parameter was added in 2019? wbm1058 (talk) 04:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Adding the parameter to the published comment was definitely a clunky process. Your analysis of the remainder is accurate, too.
 * Rather like the normal reasons for climbing Mount Everest (because it's there) I used it for that reason. For me it has a limited use. Removal corrected the symptom.
 * Should we now decide if the extra parameter(s)s is/are truly wanted. If they are we should ask for a script amendment to allow for them to be used without the weird duplication issue, and to add them without the need for a subsequent edit. Or should we leave it as it is now?
 * My opinion is that I am content either way with a 51:49 bias in favour of having the extra flexibility Fiddle   Faddle  07:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, one part of the script doesn't think AfC comments can end with anything but, which explains the duplication. It doesn't look like the script was updated to handle the second parameter. It shouldn't be too time-consuming to fix. Having not used this template a lot recently, I don't have a preference on whether the parameter should exist. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:41, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Clearly it never saw wide use (though lack of script support is likely the cause) so I would say focusing on other more pressing errors and tasks would be best. Primefac (talk) 11:19, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This has lain fallow long enough for a valid assumption that no-one wold use the feature were it to be script supported (orI might be the only one😂). I think we can now let it wither on the vine Fiddle   Faddle  10:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, one part of the script doesn't think AfC comments can end with anything but, which explains the duplication. It doesn't look like the script was updated to handle the second parameter. It shouldn't be too time-consuming to fix. Having not used this template a lot recently, I don't have a preference on whether the parameter should exist. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:41, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Clearly it never saw wide use (though lack of script support is likely the cause) so I would say focusing on other more pressing errors and tasks would be best. Primefac (talk) 11:19, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This has lain fallow long enough for a valid assumption that no-one wold use the feature were it to be script supported (orI might be the only one😂). I think we can now let it wither on the vine Fiddle   Faddle  10:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Submission is duplicated by another article already in mainspace
Sometimes I find the following as an edit summary in the draft history. "Declining submission: exists - Submission is duplicated by another article already in mainspace (AFCH 0.9.1)" If this is true, shouldn't the draft be redirected to the article. See WP:SRE. What is the point of keeping the draft? If kept, it has "edit" links, inviting further editing. If redirected, it tells everyone returning, such as from memory or bookmark, where they should be looking when wanting to contribute on that topic. The above edit summary would be a good edit summary for the edit converting the draft to a redirect. Is there ever a reason to not do this when declining due to the draft duplicating an article? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I could see it being semi-useful if the pages don't have 100% identical content and there is some stuff potentially worth merging to the main space article. Newer users that are directed to Draft space and AFC may not be savvy enough to get content from page histories.  That's the only thing I can come up with.  Perhaps watch both pages for a week or so, and after it looks like the submitter has made some edits to the main space article, then go forward with redirecting?  Not that you'd have to... Redirecting to the main article would at least get them there and they could eventually figure out what they want to add to the article—not all that different from returning to an article after several editors have made big updates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2pou (talk • contribs) 00:11, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The only issue I can see, touched on by 2pou, is that it's not always easy (or obvious) to get to a redirect. I don't disagree that redirecting is the easiest thing to do, but a new editor might not know how to then navigate to the redir to actually access the history and/or copy relevant content to the main article. Primefac (talk) 00:29, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * " not always easy (or obvious) to get to a redirect". I think it is, sufficiently.  When you have been redirected, as long as it is to a page and not a page section, you'll get the small redirected note "  (Redirected from bluelink)", and from there you are one click from the redirect page with "bluelink&redirect=no", and from there the history tab is pretty obvious.  (I wish redirects to section titles, eg Frank Burns, were more discouraged).  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:38, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess I meant more for new users, but you are right, there are enough cues and clues to figure it out. Primefac (talk) 01:00, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Regarding When you have been redirected ... you'll get the small redirected note, I know that's true on web-desktop. Does it also work on web-mobile and/or the various mobile native apps? -- RoySmith (talk) 01:17, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * RoySmith, yes, I almost rambled down that line of thought. I think that the redirect note is not revealed on the mobile site.  Does that matter?  Maybe, but in the end, I think no, because editing Wikipedia on mobile view is difficult and not recommended.  Mobile view is great to get information quick and easy, but if I have any behind-mainspace concerns, I would never use mobile view.  Desktop view works well enough on a phone, but not while walking, you have to sit down and adjust your glasses.  If I was trying to work out what happened to that draft I started, I would not expect to find the answer on mobile view.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:44, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I agree with you that editing on mobile is difficult, but in much of the world, mobile is how people access the internet. Those of us who are lucky enough to have big screens and real keyboards sometimes don't keep that in mind as much as we should.  I don't have any strong opinion on whether duplicate drafts should be redirected to mainspace, just wanted to remind people to keep thinking about mobile. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:54, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Can we do a quick survey, how many editors edit in mobile view, and then, how many continue in mobile view when something unexpected has happened? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:58, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * ec. I think doing the redirection, as an option, straight from the AFCH helper script might be a desirable feature request. I think that often it is desirable to do by the draftspace new page patrollers. I think that every potential contributor should be assumed to be savvy enough to understand the page history tab, and similar links that can be found from places such as their own contribution history. Assumptions about newcomer savviness are likely to be self-fulfilling prophesy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:33, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If (referring to the subthread above) AFCH could allow for "decline and redirect" and include a -r link to said redirect (for easier access of the history by the user) that seems reasonable. Primefac (talk) 01:00, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and a -r link sounds a good idea. Is there a better place to put AFCH feature requests than as threads here?  I think this one would be nice, but is only of moderate-low priority. (I wouldn't rank it up with AFCH comments going on the talk page, for example.)  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:48, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, the developers' list is at https://github.com/WPAFC/afch-rewrite/issues (click "New Issue"), although you'll have to sign up for a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:16, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We used to have but it was rarely used so it got merged/redirected here. I think proposals should still happen here before going to GitHub, since that's more of a "triage" for new tasks/bugs/etc. Primefac (talk) 14:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe the exists decline includes some advice about improving the existing article. That's the next thing that should happen. The draft should not be redirected until that's at least considered by the author or editors of the existing page. If nothing happens, it eventually goes to G13. Don't redirect these; There's no reason to make authors and editors dig into the draft's history for potentially useful content. ~Kvng (talk) 14:26, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft article declined
Hello, This article was based on the steak and bj day page, which is supported by similar or less reliable sources, and has started back in time with no sources at all,and  even today is based almost entirly on nonsense.It even has a link  on Valentine's Day so that all 11 year olds can see that there is a holiday dedicated to ... bjs! Is this encyclopedic ? I just wanted to give a different dimension that wikipedia is not a sexist page, but I see that it is more difficult than what has been said. Now, which sources are unreliable? All of them? Newspapers that have a history of more than 100 years, known in other parts of the world are unreliable, while in other articles here are used sources that are clearly defined as unreliable by Wikipedia. Most likely they are some not suitable, I could not find help after all and English is not my native language, but what sources are unreliable ? Help may be better at times than denial, possibly due to bias we all have Georgeof1001 (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe this is referring to this draft, which as near as I can tell was declined on notability grounds. Primefac (talk) 19:47, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello Primefac! Yes ,this is the draft that was declined.Probably,i used some sources like dictionary.com or other, popular though calendars.But,about almost the other sources, i havent understand yet the reason to decline.They are sources, among hundreds that i have gathered that are mostly old newspapers or magazines, well known, independent, secondary sources.Georgeof1001 (talk) 20:51, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Anyone else think this is a DYK waiting to happen? Probably too late for Valentine's day now, but better late than never. Paging, , , Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all... Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  12:41, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but there are some doors I feel man was never meant to open. So to speak. EEng 12:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC) Glancing at the draft before my morning coffee and without my glasses, I mistook confused about the origins for confused about the orgasms. EEng 12:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * My concern is that, as with editing political articles to achieve neutrality, and depending on the extent of one's involvement, participation alone may indicate to some, the editor's belief, persuasion or preference, and while it may serve as a positive in some ways, it may also serve as a negative in others. Keeping the latter in mind, I want to state emphatically that I have never faked a sarcasm in my life.  Atsme 💬 📧 13:07, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't find many good quality English sources. I trust some of the non-English ones are okay, but I'll have trouble evaluating those as I am not as much of a cunning linguist as I should be. Ritchie333 (talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  13:11, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ritchie - are you not using the script Cite unseen? It shows you the rating of the cites used, and this article passes notability. The question then becomes whether or not it's "encyclopedic". One surefire way to find out is to accept the draft, and see if ends up at AfD. <span style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em,#F4BBFF -0.2em -0.2em 0.2em,#BFFF00 0.4em 0.4em 0.5em;color:#A2006D"> Atsme 💬 📧 13:15, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Never heard of it, where is it? Usually, I just do my own search for sources and evaluate those already in the draft by hand. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  13:17, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen.js <-- it works in sync with WP:RSP...so use your own judgement as well. It's only a guideline. <span style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em,#F4BBFF -0.2em -0.2em 0.2em,#BFFF00 0.4em 0.4em 0.5em;color:#A2006D"> Atsme 💬 📧 13:20, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Encyclopedic? Oh dear child. We have articles on far sillier things. Ours is only to determine if there are sufficient reliable sources to write a policy compliant article. But I'm afraid I only barely speak one language, so I'm not much help if most of the sources are in...apparently German and Italian.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk  13:47, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I do so understand, GMG. But just for the sake of clarity as to what I meant by "encyclopedic" in its most pragmatic sense, I refer to WP:NOT...This page in a nutshell: #1 - The amount of information on Wikipedia is practically unlimited, but Wikipedia is a digital encyclopedia and therefore does not aim to contain all data or expression found elsewhere. There's also NOTEVERYTHING, INDISCRIMINATE, BADIDEA, and finally WHATISTOBEDONE. SMirC-wink.svg <span style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em,#F4BBFF -0.2em -0.2em 0.2em,#BFFF00 0.4em 0.4em 0.5em;color:#A2006D"> Atsme 💬 📧 14:16, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, the caveat there is that when I say "article" what I mean is an actual encyclopedia article. If I'm not mistaken, I believe we met briefly in Boston a few years ago. And I suspect that we're both old enough where we remember what a "flesh and blood" encyclopedia is like. I do fondly remember my second-hand Worldbook missing a few volumes where I could find all the things about all the things.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk  14:42, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * With my poor sense in keeping track of time, I can't recall if (Boston) it was before "Happy Hours" or during, or was it when I lost my way, or misplaced my coat? Boston was such a treat and pleasantly overwhelming. I was so looking forward to Wikimania, and then...*sigh*!! SMirC-wine.svg Cheers! <span style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em,#F4BBFF -0.2em -0.2em 0.2em,#BFFF00 0.4em 0.4em 0.5em;color:#A2006D"> Atsme 💬 📧 14:59, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I remember it was unbearably cold. I stayed in a hostel across the river from MIT and the walk across the bridge was turrble.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk  19:54, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Ritchie333, if DYK means "do you know" then yes, probably it is or should be. There are hundreds of sites as you can see, and some might be reliable as well.It is a a 'thing' already, it is a matter of time to become more popular.There is not much in English,yes,could the reason be that is not on Wikipedia already ? Who knew about Steak and bj back then? Speaking of,i used Bild.de from there.There is a confusion to me what is reliable. Daily mirror Wiki says clearly is unreliable.But it is there, on Steak & bj. They even have as sources their websites, take a look if you will.

Is my article "encyclopedic"? Honestly, i dont know. But is S&B day?It is there, for many years, giving the wrong message to young people if you ask me.So,the only way to make it look right is to include both. GMG,Atsme and all, thanks for taking the time to contribute.English is not my native language and the effort is huge,plus i have no idea how to even write a simple sentence here, let alone to edit.GMG , there's an extension in our browser, that's how i read the sources. This is the first time that i feel wiki is a friendly environment.I mean it.Thanks.Georgeof1001 (talk) 21:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

fix needed
I'm not sure what went wrong with my review at Draft:Multi t-RNA Synthetase Complex (MSC). Perhaps someone could fix it?  DGG ( talk ) 02:06, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think a ]-removal mutation occurred when you saved the edit. I've spliced it back in. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  02:15, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * thanks DGG ( talk ) 16:51, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

"Who can review" inconsistent with info at Drafts
The reviewing guidelines state "Not everyone can review potentially new articles like they can edit Wikipedia. For criteria to become a reviewer, see Participants."

While it makes sense that not everyone can deny AfC submissions, as that is unique to the AfC process, the page Drafts states: "An article created in draftspace does not belong to the editor who created it, and any other user may edit, publish, redirect, merge or seek deletion of any draft." (emphasis mine)

I think it makes sense to clarify that any editor can publish a draft to mainspace, instead of requiring an AfC reviewer to do so - the AfC process does not own the draft. Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 22:08, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , why? WP:OWN is well established. Many editors move articles who are not reviewers. Some move them well, others not so well.  Fiddle   Faddle  22:31, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * not everyone knows about WP:OWN - and I was under the mistaken impression previously that because I was not a reviewer, I could not move an article. I just want to spare others the confusion. Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 22:42, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , laudable. The challenge is to achieve it without complicating matters further. Fiddle   Faddle  16:56, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * ec. Agree. It should be clearer that AfC is advisory and for helping only. Any editor, with limited exceptions, may move a draft to mainspace. Exceptions include COI, or an AfD consensus directive to use AfC. I wonder whether the “Declined” AFCH option should come with the explanation “if in mainspace, this page would probably be deleted at AfD”. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with User:SmokeyJoe as to the notation that it would probably be deleted at AFD. That is a criterion for the reviewer to consider, and the reviewer should be asking that question, and the presence of that statement on the decline could serve as a re-reminder to the reviewer of what the criterion is.  (I think that some reviewers are declining a draft because they think that the draft will probably be nominated for AFD if accepted. )  Robert McClenon (talk) 04:15, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Article, then Redirect, then Article
I just accepted a draft which I think is likely to be sent to AFD and is likely to be Kept at AFD. The reason that I expect that is that it was previously an article, and was then cut down to a redirect. So that means that there are editors who think it should be an article, and editors who think it should be only a redirect. Yes, I did request a history merge. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

My point is that, when there was an article and there now is a redirect, that is not necessarily a reason to decline a draft. The reviewer must use judgment as to whether they think it should go back into article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Anushka Sen has returned. Again!
I have left a substantial comment on the draft, and have made the decision not to give it a formal review. I consider that I may have an inbuilt bias having seen it so many times in main and Draft and User space. Fiddle  Faddle  13:48, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Timtrent - It has been nominated for MFD. There is a consensus developing to Keep it.  Either she has an active fan club which is doing off-wiki coordination, or there is UPE, or both.  If the former, if the fan club goes public, then it can substantiate that it is a cult following, and that establishes notability.  I am recommending that, if the draft is tendentiously resubmitted again, we should not delete the draft, but should request partial blocks on tendentious resubmitters.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , That makes sense Fiddle   Faddle  06:53, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject of Current Events - Request To Reviewers
Hello editors of the WikiProject Articles for creation. I would like to ask that if you find a current event draft (An event within the last 7 days) that someone created a draft on and submitted it for Afc, please ping me or leave a message on the WikiProject Current events talk page. We would ask for the ping (to me) or talk page notice no matter if the draft is accepted or denied. We try to help editors with the current events (as that is what the WikiProject is over), so a simple notice/ping would be appreciated. Thanks, Elijahandskip (talk) 21:40, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , would adding a WikiProject Current events banner to the draft's talk page suffice? Perryprog (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that would work. Elijahandskip (talk) 22:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

When AFCH Accept is blocked by SALT.
Sometimes, AfC accepting is blocked by SALT. I have just stuck my head in one example here. I think the standard process is and should be:(0) ensure WP:THREE advice is followed; (1) Ask the SALTer to de-SALT; if refused, (2) go to WP:RfUP; if that fails, (3) go to WP:DRV. In the end, the facts get decided at AfD. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Honestly, if the salt is more than a year old, and the draft is worth accepting, just ping any admin from this project and they'll likely un-salt the page (or at the very least, drop it to ECP so you can move it). My inbox and talk page are always open for such requests. Primefac (talk) 15:32, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Kvng, Primefac, the SALT on Yaacov Heller is over seven months old. Draft:Yaacov Heller looks good enough.  User:DGG then declined, I think his decline reason could be responded to by editing to reduce the number of low quality sources and the material they source, and emphasizing the WP:THREE sources listed on the talk page.  Yet again, I think the AfC comments belong on the talk page, not dominating the draft, talking up more than the above the fold space, where I think it is contributing to DECLINE-bias, and is a barrier to editing the lede in particular.  Personally, I would edit the draft to clean it before moving to mainspace.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:21, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Since you feel it is acceptable, I will drop the protection to ECP. Primefac (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see previous decline comments as biassing towards a declne, just an alert to the reviewer to check whether the current version is improved. The more detailed, the more helpful. And I will consider unsalting any Draft if the original admin doesnt respond--just ask me. Another way, of course, is to ask here. Going to del rev is usually over-complicated.  DGG ( talk ) 03:18, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Roy, please don't box and close like this was a noticeboard request. The page in question was just incidental, the post was for the general, recurring, situation.  I am glad to see that people agree that going to DRV over a small technical hurdle is over-complicated.  To DGG, I'd say: I would not lightly proceed past a DGG-decline, even though I know better, it is a bit scary.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:15, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , My bad, carry on. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:30, 17 February 2021 (UTC) No worries. :>  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:51, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Resubmitted and accepted. Thanks to for the backup on this. I'm not interested in pissing off administrators. I hope this turns out OK. ~Kvng (talk) 14:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Resubmitted and accepted. Thanks to for the backup on this. I'm not interested in pissing off administrators. I hope this turns out OK. ~Kvng (talk) 14:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Tendentious Resubmission of Drafts
Drafts that are resubmitted tendentiously are a common problem. My suggestion is that, if the subject clearly is not likely to be notable, the draft should be submitted to MFD. However, if the subject is too soon, or the main problem is COI, rather than sending the draft to MFD, we should go to WP:ANI and request a partial block on the submitter, and possibly request Extended-Confirmed Protection on the draft. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I bring this option up often so I hope I'm not sounding like a broken record but why isn't letting these drafts wait the full 4 months (or whatever it is) in the queue an adequate means of addressing this behavior? ~Kvng (talk) 14:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Taking a break... formal process?
Hey y'all, I'm starting to get a little burnt out in AfC. While I understand the massive backlog we're working against, dealing with low quality drafts and complaints from either new page reviewers or declined users is getting tough to handle. Is there a formal process to giving up my AFC script or walking away from the project, or should I just avoid it for now and come back when ready? (Probably the latter, but I figured the former might help me against the temptation to return too soon, lol). Ping me if you need me. Bkissin (talk) 22:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , walk quietly aside, leaving the door ajar. When ready to return simply reactivate your membership if it has lapsed. Know that we are all grateful for your work, but that few of us ever tell each other so Fiddle   Faddle  22:49, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Hey, always good to take a break when feeling burnt out, your own well-being is more important than anything here. Your not the first or last to take a break, be it short, long or permanent. There is no formal process but if you feel you might be tempted you can asks to be removed from the participants, or just deactivate the AFCH script in Special:Preferences to remove temptation. Some go as far as asking for temporary account block if they are serious editing addicts! Take a break and be proud of all you have already done for the project and submitters... at the moment you are the forth on total accepts, and that's 2657 new articles so you've earnt that break. Go find some fun KylieTastic (talk) 11:33, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I remove names from the list on request, but barring going entirely inactive you're pretty likely to stay on said list indefinitely. From that perspective it's probably easier to just take a hiatus from the project and return when you feel like it (if only because it's less work for me in the long run!). Primefac (talk) 11:56, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Reviewer Abuse?
I would like the feedback of other reviewers on this particular article, Who Am I? (Pale Waves album). I think that there may have been reviewer abuse, a phrase that I am using deliberately ambiguously, because I think that I have was accused of being an abusive reviewer, but another reviewer could have reasonably thought that I was being personally attacked. The draft was created on 1 January 2021 by, before the album was released. I declined it on 1 January 2021. It was then resubmitted on 3 January 2021, and I declined it again. It appears that I didn't notice on 3 January 2021 that my 1 January 2021 decline message had been removed. It was then resubmitted twice on 6 January 2021 and on 16 January 2021 and declined twice by User:AngusWOOF. Angus said on 16 January to wait until the album was released, which was scheduled for 12 February 2021. The draft was then resubmitted on 9 February 2021 with the album still scheduled for release on 12 February 2021. I declined it, again saying that it should be resubmitted after the album was released.

On 11 February 2021, Srodgers1701 removed the record of declines and resubmitted it as if it were a new draft. I then restored the record of reviews and rejected it. I said that Srodgers1701 should not resubmit the draft, because they had been gaming the system. The album would probably be notable after it was reviewed in about a day, and another draft should then be submitted by another editor. At this point, I also asked about conflict of interest. I warned that a topic-ban or partial block could be requested for further gaming of the system. The usual response to tendentious resubmission is to nominate the draft for deletion, but that would be the wrong answer with an album that would probably be notable later.

I then went to the band talk page, Talk:Pale Waves, and asked if someone would tweak the draft and resubmit it, now that the album had been released.

Srodgers1701 removed the record of declines again and resubmitted the draft again. I declined it. An IP address resubmitted it. Angus restored the AFC record, removed puffery, and said that charting should be added. I made a report at the conflict of interest noticeboard.

At this point moved the draft into article space. Ss112 left a lengthy edit summary scolding the reviewers, in particular saying that I owed an apology to Srodgers1701, saying that Srodgers1701 was an enthusiastic editor who was simply trying to get an article about an album.

I have not apologized and do not plan to apologize. I still don't know whether Srodgers1701 is an enthusiastic editor or a COI editor. Sometimes the conflict of interest noticeboard process doesn't do anything. I think that Ss112 is an editor who has a misguided enthusiasm for scolding the reviewers. The article on the album is now in article space.

Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The essay WP:LETITGO seems applicable here. I don't know when the reviews were actually added to the article, but looking at the dates of the reviews (1 on 2/8, 1 on 2/9, 3 on 2/11) there was definitely at least potential to meet criteria 1 of WP:NALBUM before the album's release.  While charting is a criteria for NALBUM, it's an OR, not AND.  That's all hindsight, though.  If I were in the moment, my advice would have been not to care about the timing of a resubmission.  There's not necessarily a need to wait on hitting SUBMIT.  It could be done pre-emptively expecting that a potential 4-month wait could be coming, and by the time it is reviewed, the album was already out.  If waiting for more notability evidence is needed, but it's only days away, I'd add a comment w/o declining as a recommendation to other reviewers on your concern.  Return when you think it was likely notable, and if it's still waiting, evaluate it as appropriate.  If it has already been moved by someone, that's OK, move on or if you feel the need, glance it over to see if it was appropriate.  -2pou (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 2¢: After looking through all edits and reading everyone's comments, I think the best thing is to just move on. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , sometimes walking quietly away while asking for other eyes on the draft is the only way to achieve a calm and quiet result.
 * It seems to me that no good deed goes unpunished. Fiddle   Faddle  22:53, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Here are my comments (yes, I'm involved in the mess above):
 * I'm going to assume is an enthusiastic editor but warn them not to delete AFC reviewers' messages, even if the issue has been addressed or corrected in a later edit.   Hopefully they learn that whether they have COI or not. I didn't really see COI, but tendentious resubmissions and an unusually singular focus on that draft would sway me otherwise.
 * For expected popular albums, AFC can probably review and approve it as soon as two or more full-album reviews from RS'es are written that can be summarized in the reception section. I don't mean the reviews box with all the stars, I mean actual verbiage in the Reception. That came in really late in the subs. If that's not available, then consider the charting. Would that be fair enough? AngusW🐶🐶F  ( bark  •  sniff ) 21:05, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I think "abuse" overstates the problem, but I see a recurring theme if difficult author/proponent - reviewer interaction, each with a reasonable perspective that differs to the other's. i.e. it is a process problem.  My suggestions:
 * (1) Reviewer comments, all signed comments, go on the talk page, in the usual talk page method, newer at the bottom, in untemplated markup allowing for easy threaded replies. Many of the difficulties in this case may have been avoided simply bby the use of standard talk format.
 * (2) Explicitly allow removing of templates, as per mainspace practice, when the template is dealt with, it is removed. AfC should find another method for recording the history of reviewer declines and rejects, and preferably keep it on the talk page.
 * (3) Explicitly and repeated reaffirm that AfC is advisory only. "Declined" means "if in mainspace, this page would probably be deleted at AfD”.  "Rejected" means "If in mainspace, this would be CSD-ed or AfD-ed".  In other words, inform the author that they may mainspace their draft against reviewer advice.
 * (4) COI needs to be an exception to (3) above, or should COI mean going straight to AfD to discuss COI? Unfortunately the community is divided on the question of COI and even UPE being a reason for deletion.  I think, if it is not a reason for deletion, then it is not a reason to decline.
 * Back to the case, Who Am I? (Pale Waves album), the proof will be in the result at AfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:51, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * All of this is one of the main reasons why I have a personal policy to review drafts only once. Consider giving it a try. ~Kvng (talk) 17:00, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

No response to submission and question is now archived
Hello, sorry if this is the wrong place to post, but I'd like to get the attention of the project's administrators. I made a submission at the Afc help desk a week ago, but the query wasn't answered despite all other submissions on the day being answered. It is now archived. It was a pretty long question but there was nothing vexatious about it. Please can someone advise. Thanks. Amana22 (talk) 16:04, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , could you please provide a link to the discussion in question? Primefac (talk) 17:30, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Presumably this: 15:16:07, 12 February 2021 review of draft by Amana22. —  The  Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 17:45, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To preserve the context, I've left an answer where the question is archived, coupled with a comment on Draft:Nicolai Peitersen. --Worldbruce (talk) 04:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft to article merges
Y'all, please chime in at Wikipedia talk:Proposed article mergers about merging drafts into articles. Thanks, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 07:36, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Timing hypothesis
Teahouse hosts like myself answer questions from AfC submitters about the timing of the approval process, usually with something that talks about it being a pile, not a queue, and taking days to months because there are 4,000 items currently awaiting review.

Based on what I've seen and heard about at the TH, my guess is that declines/rejects tend to happen within a few days to a couple weeks, while approvals take longer, depending on the complexity of the article, online vs. offline or English vs. non-English sources, etc. I'm guessing that reviewers generally try to make a "first-pass" evaluation fairly quickly to look for common "show-stoppers", like lack of refs, poor refs, other notability issues, etc. Am I correct? Does it seem useful to tell people that? I would think that it is useful for them to know that they shouldn't have to expect to wait months just to get a decline/reject over something they could have fixed in the meanwhile if they had known.

Thoughts?

P.S.: This came to mind as I remembered the days when, as a lowly visiting student, I'd submit a punched-card deck to be run on an IBM mainframe and wait hours for the results, only to see a single-page result as I approached the "honeycomb" (instead of a stack), telling me I typo'd an "O" for a "0" on the very first card.

—[ Alan M 1  (talk) ]— 22:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , that seems pretty correct. The drafts that take the longest to review would probably be the "danger zone" area of things like mildly-promotional BLPs or corporations, especially when they're not quite ready to accept and not immediately declinable. Ref-bombing can also make reviewing fairly difficult, and there are occasionally drafts with only offline sources that are also a bit tricky. (A mildly interesting example of that might be Draft:PC Enterprises.) An ideal draft submission should generally be short (preferably somewhere between stub and start class), not have any duplicated references, and a fairly clear indication of what the three best sources are. Things to not worry about are usually going to be copyediting, formatting, categorizes, and so on. A lot of submitters get pretty invested in prioritizing length or detail—I wonder if perhaps an example of a very well done stub or start class article on WP:YFA would help avoid that. Perryprog (talk) 22:42, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * yes its not a queue, more of a soon or whenever pile. When I'm active I tend to do a pass across all new submissions for the day which results in mostly obvious declines, and rarely obvious accepts. However to avoid the backlash if we dare miss something I find even the easiest to accept take a factor or two longer than declines to check. So it does mean most reviews are done quick (minutes or hours) or really long (weeks or months). Basically we need more reviewers to cut the backlog to a sensible max wait time.... but it seams there are lots off editors willing to complain about AfC but not actually help, and some that complain but also keep draftifying and just adding to the problem. I really feel for those who have to wait for months whatever the end result. KylieTastic (talk) 23:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I clipped a couple of archived newspaper articles that might be slightly useful (on the Draft talk page). KylieTastic, I hear you. —[ Alan M 1  (talk) ]— 23:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , <3. Perryprog (talk) 23:51, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * , totally agree, couldn't have said it better. 1:1 my opinion. CommanderWaterford (talk) 20:57, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I always thought the card deck and the printout was the best computer interface.
 * I go for old submissions when fresh, new when tired. New are easy to decline often to accept, too. :Old require head scratching. Even though our objective is to accept as soon as a draft stats a decent chance of not failing an immediate deletion process (is it 50% or 60% chance? I forget, but go for 60%) some are truly awkward. I also review paid submissions somewhat more carefully. Why? Because I think payment means the author should be much much better than most paid authors are
 * Then we get the ones we have individual trouble with. I find music very hard and some academics almost impossible. I tend to stand aside onm those unless they are blindingly obvious.
 * I think, too, that pictures need to be followed through to Commons (etc) for correct licencing. Maybe that's just me, but someone has to weed out the unpermissioned, the copyvios etc, and reviewers are well placed to do that
 * We need more reviewers. There is a lot of heavy lifting being done by a relatively small population of reviewers.
 * I'd love the thing to be a real queue, but it just ain't one. And some things end up ignored by accident until they are advanced in years Fiddle   Faddle  23:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I've been doing some resubmissions of abandoned drafts and can tell you that early accepts do happen. ~Kvng (talk) 22:07, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Category:Promising draft articles
Just found out about this. Potentially interesting. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:09, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The top screenful of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SDZeroBot/G13_soon is similarly interesting and updated with new interesting stuff every day. ~Kvng (talk) 22:10, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Excerpts are a really good idea! I should add a checkbox to pending-subs for them. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Regarding my eligibility
Hello, just check and reply me whether I am eligibility kr not for this post.

Sorry but I forget to sign Jogesh 69 (talk) 20:15, 27 February 2021 (UTC)Jogesh 69


 * checking is easy. The criteria are stated at the head of WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. You then look at your own editing track record and compare it with the criteria. WHile I could give you an answer I think you will learn more by researching the answer. Editors who believe they meet the criteria are welcome to apply. Their track record will be examined and a decision made by those who make the decisions.  Fiddle   Faddle  20:37, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Edit filter for AfC redirect submissions
Currently, the process for a non-autoconfirmed user to submit a redirect is pretty confusing from a "this is what you need to do" standpoint. It's not prominently advertised in the same way the article wizard is, and that often leads to attempted redirect submissions from the normal AfC process instead of on AfC/R. While I do know there's some contention about whether we should just decline any submissions or manually accept them and move it into mainspace, I do think it's agreed that redirect submissions do take up more reviewer time than maybe they should.

Similar to our "unsourced AfC submission" edit filter, what would you all think of a filter that gave a notice on an attempted redirect submission that their proposal is likely better suited to be made on AfC/R, instead? See also the proposed filter at, which would be more-or-less implemented barring consensus here. Perryprog (talk) 18:53, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Cautious Support with a review after a (to be decided) period to see if it is used/useful.  Fiddle   Faddle  20:44, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Noting that this might be obsoleted by Mediawiki:AFC-submit-wizard.js to which I promise to give the finishing touches soon(TM). That script can be coded to actually prevent redirect submissions with a message to use AFC/R. – SD0001  (talk) 09:36, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , ah, that's good to know—the fact that you're working on that reminds me of a second (possibly bad) idea I had as a way to deal with some of the more "common" issues we see in submissions. I was thinking it would either be a bot or Lua module that you could invoke which would then give back a list of potential issues with links specific to each item on the draft's talkpage. This would probably be things like too many or too few references, external links in the body, duplicated references, bare URLs, improperly formatted reflists, links/references to certain sites like social media, and so on. This all shouldn't be too hard to do with the Transcluder module or through title.getContent, but I'm not sure if this is worth the effort, or if it would be all that helpful. Perryprog (talk) 21:47, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea at least for a POC demo. Go for it! – SD0001  (talk) 06:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Eyes on Draft:Anonymous Personal Sex Blogging please
Following the creating editor's tl;dr plea on the AFC helpdesk, I ventured into the draft, one very reasonably declined by, and have tried to offer guidance. The reason for asking for extra eyes is that the editor has made significant efforts, and may benefit from further thoughts and assistance. An editor who has taken this huge amount of effort is one we would not wish to lose. Fiddle  Faddle  10:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , maybe ask them for their WP:THREE a short list of their best references. If the concept passes GNG, then moving it to mainspace and letting other editors start trimming and iterating on it is possibly an option. If the concept doesn't pass GNG, then the draft's other issues become moot. A quick search of google books for "anonymous personal sex blog" in quotes turns up zero results. "Anonymous personal sex blogging" turns up one result from 1928 (false positive). Suggests to me that the concept may not be notable. Hope this helps. – Novem Linguae (talk) 10:38, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Good thoughts. I think I have done all I wish to with this draft myself, and I see you have been working in it to try to help. Would you, perhaps, make this suggestion to them? I am also not certain this passes the notability threshold  Fiddle   Faddle  10:42, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I did some work on one copy to help the editor get started on Wikifying it. I think it is potentially notable once it has been slimmed down. There is a gem of an article in there. There are probably 20-30 hours of work in to get it to a state where the references can be reviewed effectively. I've tried to get the editor interested in doing some of the work themselves but they haven't picked it up and ran with it.   scope_creep Talk  13:15, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm slightly inclined to agree . I'm not jazzed about the title, as it seems like the content itself looks more at sexuality on the internet in a more general sense and I don't see how sex blogging as a concept is independently notable from other expressions of sexuality on the internet. They can link to Sex and the City or Sex and the Single Mom all they want, but neither of those were specifically about sex blogging. Wasn't Carrie's Sex and the City column published in the newspaper with her name attached to it? (I didn't watch the show). Bkissin (talk) 14:37, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a defined subculture that has exploded in the last decade and as such is worth study and an article. There is no doubt it is independently notable. It needs an article and if it's not this one, then it will need to be something else.   scope_creep Talk  15:14, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , This one is lengthy, and wanders. If we can squeeze sufficient notability into/out of it to accept it then the community can rip it apart and rebuild it. I think the art of the précis is required here. Theres a lot of motherhood and apple pie that misses the mark and needs to be ripped out.
 * WP:THREE is a great guide. An article was long as this needs the yet to be written WP:TWENTYNINE I think! Unless it can be pruned such that three are sufficient! Fiddle   Faddle  23:06, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , As the author of WP:THREE, I'm always gratified when people cite it. However, you wrote, This WP:THREE is necessary to pass WP:GNG.  WP:THREE is a personal essay and doesn't represent official policy. It was meant as a tool for authors to point reviewers at the best references.  Turning it into a WP:N litmus test is more than I intended. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:29, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Mentions of WP:THREE have been struck. – Novem Linguae (talk) 13:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Mentions of WP:THREE have been struck. – Novem Linguae (talk) 13:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

The draft author and I have begun a source analysis at Draft talk:Anonymous personal sex blog, with the goal of figuring out if any of the sources pass GNG. Feel free to take a look. By the way, if a scholarly article talks about "sex blogging in China", but the term "anonymous personal sex blog" is not mentioned in the article, is that close enough to count for GNG, or is that WP:SYNTH? – Novem Linguae (talk) 13:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * personally, I think that would depend on how the terms are being used. If the implication in the paper is clear that they are talking about sex blogs that are anonymous, and the term 'anonymous personal sex blog' is used as written, with no additional meaning beyond the obvious, then I think you have two ways of referring to the same thing, and you're clear of any synthesis. However, if the author of the draft seems to have given 'anonymous personal sex blog' an additional meaning beyond the literal (e.g. to qualify as such, the blogs need to meet criteria X, Y, and Z), then we're straying into original research territory. ƒirefly  ( t · c ) 10:34, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Update: The author has stated on the draft talk page that they are writing a new draft and they plan to be more concise. They will submit it at a later date. – Novem Linguae (talk) 10:50, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , oh we go this way with this editor since at least a month with several other editors involved, especially ScopeCreep did a lot effort for them - issue is AFAIS that the editor does their edit mobile (has no own desktop their stated once) and they insist on getting their OR published. I already asked at several relevant wikiprojects for help, unfortunately without any great outcome so far. CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Duplicate drafts
I have increasingly noticed a proliferation of duplicate drafts (for example, Draft:Steve Pilot and Draft:Steve-Pilot). It seems evident that this is a tactic being used by paid or COI editors to hedge their bets, using sockpuppet accounts to make multiple drafts on the same person and submitting them for approval at different times (or after an initial rejection under one title) in hopes of drawing a more favorable reviewer the next time. Is there some way that we can generate a report flagging new drafts that are suspiciously similar to existing drafts? BD2412 T 05:53, 24 February 2021 (UTC)


 * After spending some time in G13 rescues looking at AfC from an author's perspective, this behavior doesn't shock me. Criteria applied by our reviewers vary greatly and a second, third or fourth (!) opinion may legitimately be warranted. ~Kvng (talk) 22:27, 24 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I too think there are some unfair declines.
 * What do you think of my earlier suggestion?  "Declined" means "if in mainspace, this page would probably be deleted at AfD". "Rejected" means "If in mainspace, this would be CSD-ed or AfD-ed".  These messages should be applied to the draft as an explanation, to inform the author that the response is the reviewer's "advice", and to remind the reviewers of the nominal standard for accept/decline/reject.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:17, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Whether a decline is fair or not, it seems like a poor practice to make a duplicate draft under a different name. At best, the drafts will need to be merged because the duplicate will fail to attribute the original edit history. At worst, the draft creators are engaged in sockpuppetry and COI/UPE, and should be blocked. BD2412  T 00:27, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems I totally missed the point of the post. I was thinking of an answer, but that wasn't it.
 * A proliferation of duplicate drafts? I have seen some of this, not a proliferation, but I don't doubt you.  Sometimes, duplicate drafts come to MfD as duplicate drafts, and we respond with "Speedy redirect per WP:SRE".  I think that is a good solution to any content fork.
 * a tactic being used by paid or COI editors to hedge their bets? Here, you are raising a separate bigger problem of UPEs and their developing tactics. I think mere COI editors are a much lesser problem.  UPEs are people using throwaway accounts, one per job, for a short term contract to get the client's desired page into mainspace.  Probably, they only need it to stick in mainspace for a week for them to be paid and to move on.  These people are somewhat experienced Wikipedians; the well experienced Wikipedian UPEs, they are too good for you to detect. My proferred best idea of a solution to this is Quarantine of content created by undisclosed paid editors.  Do not delete detected UPE evidence, evidence of tactics, that just clears their slate to learn and try again.  Instead, preserve it somewhere, where it can be learned from.  It is easy to prove a UPE false positive, they will engage in personable conversation.  Someone engaging in subterfuge cannot allow themselves to be publicly recorded in personable conversations, people just can't control their personal cues.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with User:BD2412 that unreasonable declines by reviewers should not be a reason for multiple drafts. Creating a duplicate draft is very much the wrong answer to a questionable decline.  It is usually a means of gaming the system.  I added the language on the gaming of titles to the policy on gaming the system, with consensus, because that was and is a common abuse.  Although submitting a duplicate draft is the wrong answer, it is sometimes done in good faith, and then the draft should either be declined, or redirected to the correct draft title, and the submitter should then be told to discuss at the Teahouse.  If we think that an editor is submitting multiple copies of a draft tendentiously, they should be rejected, and we should consider sanctions against the author.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:53, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * By the way, in my opinion, the COI Noticeboard goes through periods when it works well at dealing with conflict of interest, and through periods when it is almost useless. I haven't used it in the past month, but recently I thought it was almost useless, ignoring reports that should have at least had an admin comment.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:53, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Examples of Duplicate Drafts

 * I will provide another example of what is probably tendentious submission of a duplicate draft. See Draft:Flat Branch Home Loans, which was declined, and Draft:Flat Branch, which was submitted a few hours ago and which I have declined.  I tried to move Draft:Flat Branch to Draft:Flat Branch Home Loans because Flat Branch is the town that the bank is in, but there was already a declined draft there, so this is a resubmission.  Both drafts were submitted by unregistered editors, so we don't know if they were the same person.  In this case, I think it made little difference whether I declined the second draft or redirected it to the first declined draft.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Another example is Draft:Robert Taylor and Draft:Dr. Robert Taylor. They have now both been redirected to Draft: Robert Taylor (choirmaster), due to a combination of disambiguation and dealing with multiple drafts.  This is clearly a case where the submitter knows that they are doing multiple submissions, not where they don't know any better.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:11, 27 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Sockpuppet_investigations/Gahlee is an example of a series of nine sockpuppet accounts being created to write versions of a draft bio on biology student Amy-Charlotte Devitz under seven different titles. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 10:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * My primary concern in starting this thread is whether we can set something up to quickly detect these instances in the first place. What we do with that information thereafter would be a fact-specific inquiry. BD2412  T 16:55, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * User:BD2412 - I think that the first step toward detecting these instances is to try to move the draft to the simplest version of its title, which is what its title should be according to the MOS guidelines. That is, move Ralph Zwogli (businessman) to Ralph Zwogli.  If the move fails, either because a declined draft exists, or because the title is salted, there is probable gaming of names.  This is especially important if the draft title is disambiguated "wrong", as in Ralph Zwogli actor rather than Ralph Zwogli (actor).  This was the case with Devitz.  Then the AFC script has a feature that will show any deletions from article space.  If there seems to have been funny business, there probably was funny business.  The detection relies on the reviewers knowing what to look for and using a combination of knowledge and common sense.  Is that a starting answer?  Robert McClenon (talk) 18:07, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Script updated
The script has been updated and hopefully it's a bit faster now. It is now properly loaded from the MediaWiki namespace instead of my userspace, from which it was previously loaded (for historical reasons). Nothing else should've changed; please let me know if you experience any issues. Thanks! Enterprisey (talk!) 05:52, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , Thank you and the team for all your hard work.
 * I have noticed "(AFCH undefined)" at the end of edit summaries. I may not have noticed it before the change. If it is newly there, should it be? And please, what does it signify? Fiddle   Faddle  11:01, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Normally that bit contains the version number rather than 'undefined' (e.g. ) - I imagine the version number isn't getting set properly(?), hence the variable that should contain it instead ends up as undefined. ƒirefly  ( t · c ) 11:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Bug filed - I'm going to see if I can submit a PR. Can't be that hard a fix... ƒirefly  ( t · c ) 12:13, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I got this error just now. Here's a diff. I did a reject instead of a decline, perhaps that's the code path where the error occurs. I'll make a GitHub ticket. – Novem Linguae  (talk) 12:04, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Fixed; thanks for the reports. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:32, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Fixed; thanks for the reports. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:32, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Album notability and release date
Discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(music). Please chime in with your comments. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark  •  sniff ) 00:45, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Testing
Hello, AFC, there is a message saying to preserve this page because it's being used by AFC developers but it seems to only have been used in 2018-2019 and the editor who posted this message hasn't edited in several years.

Is it still of any value to AFC? Tagging Enterprisey as they did some work on this page, too. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 03:59, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I still use it from time to time; the script can be set to not make any actual edits for testing purposes, so the history won't show anything. I suppose it's annoying to have a test draft cluttering up the lists/categories and requiring G13 postponement; we can always test with user sandboxes, which are G2-exempt. On the other hand, I can move-protect this page (to prevent acceptance) but maybe not all the sandboxes, and it's occasionally useful for point new script developers to. So in conclusion I don't have any preference either way. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:43, 2 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Surely if such a page appears on a G13 Cat/list wouldn't the easiest thing be just to do a a quick edit to reset. It's worth keeping to make script development slightly easier and there is still lots of issues needed development so an ongoing requirement. KylieTastic (talk) 10:33, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I've blanked and move-protected the page. If an admin can't see that there's a gigantic "do not delete" message before they delete it, then they need glasses. I'll note there's a sister page at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox, which could probably stand to be redirected to Draft:Testing. Primefac (talk) 14:32, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Too bad there is no delete protection! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:06, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The Main Page has it. – SD0001  (talk) 09:46, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

COI editor - ON-LE 4U
Anybody mind moving that back to draft space so it can go through AfC? The COI of the editor appears obvious, and well if the subject is indeed notable they need a block until identity can be verified through OTRS. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:33, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , it is up for speedy deletion as unambiguous advertising. I followed the picture to Commons, as is my habit with suspect articles and drafts containing pictures. 100% of the pictures uploaded by the editor appear to be copyvios. Fiddle   Faddle  07:49, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Darn me for being too cautious. Anyway, if that's dealt with, then no further issue. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Username Change
As my username has recently been changed, can my new username please be added to the list of participants? Noah!💬 14:05, 6 March 2021 (UTC)


 * ✅. —&#8239; The Earwig (talk) 22:09, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Deniz Unay
or other admins, does Draft:Deniz Unay qualify for WP:G4 after Articles for deletion/Deniz Unay? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 11:34, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Deb seems to think so. Haven't looked since it's already gone. Primefac (talk) 17:10, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Backlog drives
This is what has confused me the most during my time at AfC: the last backlog drive was five years ago. Our backlog is one of the biggest and ugliest on all of Wikipedia. Many of these article writers have been waiting for almost four months. A reviewer comes at last. He declines. But the decline is unclear. The poor user asks for help at many different places, but no one can help because those places are all backlogged, too! Why not just have one? 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 11:36, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Speaking personally, the major change with AfC has been the restriction of article creation to confirmed users, which means AfC is the place spammers and creators of drivel have to go, where they can't be deleted as easily. So reviewing the backlog becomes soul-destroying to trying and find the "diamond in the rough". <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  12:44, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've tried. People think it's too hard to ensure that quality work will get done, which is a reasonable thought. If you have any ideas in that direction, feel free to make suggestions. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:17, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We just hit 5,000+ articles backlogged, it might be time. I'm not entirely sure how it would be implemented though. Noah!💬 19:42, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Reporting for time being under review
Hi, just for curiosity : Do we have a reporting how long an article is being marked as "being under review" ? Came across an article which had been marked for several weeks w/o any progress or feedback and the creator was wondering what is happening - does somebody has an eye on this? CommanderWaterford (talk) 22:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * There are probably other ways, but Template:AfC statistics/reviewing lists submissions currently being reviewed, with the time it was marked as under review in the "Reviewer" column. —&#8239; The Earwig (talk) 03:58, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * On the AfC banner at the top of this page (or other pages of the project), the Submissions tab has a Categorized link, where Category:Pending AfC submissions being reviewed now is a subcat. That's another way. -2pou (talk) 04:06, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You are right, though the category does not directly tell you how long submissions have been under review for. (There aren't many though, so it's easy to check.) If we're interested in historical data, I'm not sure it's cleanly recorded anywhere, other than the history of the submissions chart. —&#8239; The Earwig (talk) 04:22, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, right. Thanks. I missed that part. -2pou (talk) 05:14, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. CommanderWaterford (talk) 10:33, 9 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I would say if any article is under review for more than a few days with no action (and no comment giving a reason for an extended review time) that it is not just acceptable but should be standard practice to unmark. If we had an AfC bot I would suggest it automatically un-mark and leave a message on the original reviewers talk page. My only concern is if say a submission is put under review on day zero, then un-marked a week later that it then has a high chance of not being reviewed till it reaches the end of the queue months later which is not fair if the original reason was the reviewer thought it was aceptable and just forgot. KylieTastic (talk) 12:16, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * We have a few AfC bots. I think this is a good idea. Maybe start with a talk page notice to the reviewer after some time (maybe a week? 3 days?) and remove the reviewing status after a few more days if no response. In principle, reviewers shouldn't be claiming submissions if they aren't actively working on them. If something requires extended review for whatever reason then they can say so. (How often does that really happen?) —&#8239; The Earwig (talk) 13:59, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , the extended period is generally only when a particular time consuming action like a history merge is asked for Fiddle   Faddle  14:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree with this idea, only because the first thing that should be done is contacting the editor who marked it as "under review". I have been in a situation many times where I set something under review with the intention of revisiting it when I'm on a different machine, my head is more clear, etc, and then I forget about it. A helpful nudge is much more appreciated than just "oh you put a bunch of work into this but it's been X days so I'm going to take over without any notification". Leave the option of un-marking to the reviewer (which does happen fairly often from what I've seen). Primefac (talk) 14:32, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Primefac that is what The Earwig suggested... a talk page notice to the reviewer first - and I would also add that I think to stop disruptive bot actions any later bot reversal should only be if no other edits have been made to the article. However I think just having a bot send a polite reminder would actually be enough for most cases as the remaining very few cases can be handled manually. Maybe the bot should notify the reviewer after x days and in no change post here x+y days. KylieTastic (talk) 14:45, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry, missed that bit. Given the relative infrequency in which pages sit as marked-for-more-than-a-day, I don't know if a bot is strictly necessary, though I would agree that some sort of polite reminder for if/when such pages reach that point would be good. Primefac (talk) 14:51, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Not sure if we really need a bot for this - looks like it is not happening quite that often and I personally would appreciate a friendly word of a "colleague" than a bot notification. But that's just my 2 cents. CommanderWaterford (talk) 22:42, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Well the template itself says that the AfC Draft Creator should ask if there is no feedback within twelve hours, I personally would extent this time to 24 hours but absolutely not for 2-3 weeks. I would suggest asking the reviewer if he is still working on it and if there is no response within some time (no idea, 24 hours?!) undo the "marking under review" CommanderWaterford (talk) 22:40, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * This seems reasonable - I've had long holds when I've had drafts that needed the overriding of a salting. This could be particularly time consuming when a) the placing admin didn't respond quickly b) I wasn't an admin (so waits on both ends). However, I added a detailed explanation at the time, so this wouldn't have been an issue Nosebagbear (talk) 15:24, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Author or Editor Comments on Drafts
This is partly a question and mostly an observation. Sometimes authors of drafts, or other editors who have seen the drafts, write comments in the draft that are not AFC comments, and which will therefore not be removed if the draft is accepted. Occasionally the comments are vandalic, but usually the comments are put there because the author or editor doesn't know either how AFC comments work or where talk pages are. I usually move the comments from the draft to the draft talk page with a note that they are comments that were moved. Comments about a draft are appropriate for the draft talk page, which is about how to improve the draft, unless there is something wrong with them such as being uncivil. Does anyone else sometimes encounter comments in the article body? Does anyone have a different idea about what to do with them? Robert McClenon (talk) 09:01, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * AfC comments, and signed reasons, on the top of the draft, they are obviously very confusing aren’t they. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:43, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about AFC comments, but about non-AFC comments. I think that SmokeyJoe knows this and is agreeing.  We are saying that the presence of the AFC comments, which are part of the process, confuses new editors who don't what is "special" about AFC comments into thinking that comments in general are permitted, and that putting comments on the draft is the normal process.  Non-AFC comments complicate the work of a reviewer.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I've only ever encountered comments at the top or bottom of drafts (usually as a header along the lines of "I've made changes and am now resubmitting!"). If there is substance I'll generally throw it in an AfC comment or move to the talk page as you describe, but if it's just nonsense (or not useful) I'll simply remove it. Primefac (talk) 13:21, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I hadn't thought of enclosing the comment in an AFC comment wrapper. That is a good idea, but needs to be done carefully so as to be done correctly.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Sometimes the comments are of a nature that they will provide useful information to editors after the draft is accepted. That is why I would like the comments moved to the talk page rather than deleted when the article is accepted.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * In the last 200 drafts I have seen perhaps 2-3 with those comments inside, usually I remove them before approving. CommanderWaterford (talk) 20:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I cant say I have ever seen comments that are not either actioned (request to create a redirect from alt name etc) of just junk that can be deleted after acceptance. So without examples of these mystical rare entities I would say accept, clean up, tag, move-on.... KylieTastic (talk) 12:22, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Two Ideas
I will restate two ideas that are being mentioned here, both of which have previously been mentioned. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Put AFC Templates on the Back
Some editors including SmokeyJoe have been repeatedly saying that AFC declines and comments should be on the talk page rather than the draft page, the back rather than the front. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. On Wikipedia, signed talk goes on the talk page, excepting noticeboards. Comments on the draft page proper derives from when drafts were subpages of WT:AfC, which was silly then, and signed comments on top of the page is still silly. It is confusing, it is a pointless cultural barrier for new AfC users cf. mainspace/talkspace, it has all sorts of downsides and no upsides. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , perhaps I do not understand it but usually new users are not even aware of a talk page being existing so they will never see or read any comment. So IMHO the best way is the current one. CommanderWaterford (talk) 22:30, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah. A common response.  Have you really thought it through?  Do you really think the system should progress with a new user writing a new page, and cater for this new user never understanding the existence of a talk page?!?!  What happens if the draft goes to mainspace, are they going to continue editing the article unaware of talk pages?  Are they going to start a new draft, and never even look at the talk page of the article they wrote?  The answer is to tag the draft, with a tag, which has no creative content by the tagger, which says there is a new comment on the talk page, and points to it.  Like all tags, when dealt with it can be cut, we do not keep records of tags on the tops of articles.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:47, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It's hard enough for some submitting editors to read what is in front of their faces, let alone getting them to find a talk page. While the draft remains a draft it is a full work in progress, and the comments should be freely and fully visible where the work is done. After acceptance is a very different matter, and the comments are consigned to the article history, and relatively inaccessible.  Fiddle   Faddle  22:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe that this is readily countered, "editors to read what is in front of their faces" breaks down when there are too many things in their faces. Google "sign blindness", I think.  Too many signs and none of them get read.  And this is before the question of how the drafts are supposed to respond to the comments, and further before the issue of above-the-fold clutter, and making it very hard to edit the draft lede section.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:44, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * SmokeyJoe if I remember correctly this has been mentioned multiple times in the past and I agree and I guess others do that the notices become to much. However there has also been a repeated consensus not to move to the talk as very few new editors use and frankly it puts extra load on reviewers in an already failing badly system. Instead of having the same conversation maybe we could come up with a different solution? I would start with suggesting the the minimised older reviews are made even smaller, and I would be in favour of simplifying the full notices as well as they are clearly not read/understood by many submitters. KylieTastic (talk) 12:07, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Support it is time to make this change and bring AfC in line with the workflow in mainspace. We apparently have developers available to work on the script. A prominent link to comments on the talk page from the reject notice for access to any comments should help new editors up the learning curve. ~Kvng (talk) 14:34, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose - the status quo makes it obvious and we still have issues from submitters, plus easier for me when reviewing. For articles, it would disrupt from its reading as a live articles, but a draft shouldn't be read by anyone who isn't contributing or reviewing it Nosebagbear (talk) 15:28, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I go by Fiddle Faddle, as mentioned before I do not think that any new editor will realise that there is a talk page of his draft. Many of them do not even read what is directly in front of them. CommanderWaterford (talk) 18:10, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Move AFC Comments to Back on Acceptance
I have been saying that, if AFC comments continue to be on the front of a draft, they should be moved to the talk page when the draft is accepted. They are normally not harmful or confusing and may be useful for improvement. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I will give a specific example of a type of comment that should be preserved. Sometimes the reviewer disambiguates the draft title, and they or another reviewer may add a comment that the new article (when it becomes an article) should be listed in a disambiguation list or a hatnote. I use the Adddisamb or Addhat templates for the purpose. Those comments need to be acted on if the draft is accepted, but they will be stripped off by the AFC accept script. Moving them to the talk page is a good idea, and moving other comments to the talk page is a small price to pay to get them moved. One complicated way to deal with this would be to have two styles of AFC comments, one of which is moved to the talk page and one of which is discarded on acceptance. That sounds like an unnecessary complication, unless someone has a reason why it is needed. So can the comments either go on the talk page or be moved to the talk page? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Support migration of AFC comments to the talk page on acceptance. They seem to me to be wholly germane to the article's visible history. I think, though, that I woudl migrate them to a collapsible box Fiddle   Faddle  22:43, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose the collapsible box. Why make java complications on a talk page for newcomers who you think barely understand talk pages?  Instead, set up auto-archiving, 6 months, leave a minimum of three threads.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , an acceptable concept Fiddle   Faddle  00:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yeah, I dislike collapsed boxes because they prevent cntrl-f from being able to find what you're looking for, I think they are best for hiding things that shouldn't have been said.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * If Enterprisey can make the script auto-enable slow archiving (inc. min threads) on accept, then shuffle all the comments (no need to filter) to the Talk page that would be an excellent outcome for me. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:30, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

History Merge Denied - Parallel Histories
I have a question about a situation that has arisen a few times in the past two weeks or so. The general situation is that a draft is about a title that is a redirect in article space to another article. After review, I decide that the draft should be accepted. What should be done with the redirect? If the redirect has minimal history, it can be deleted. I can't delete the redirect, but I have the page-move privilege, and can move it and suppress the move redirect. So I move the redirect to user space, and tag it for G6, and accept the draft. The redirect then gets mopped up by an admin with a mop. That is straightforward.

However, sometimes the redirect has history. In particular, there may have previously been an article, but it was then cut down to a redirect. If so, acceptance of the draft involves assessing whether the reasons for the cut-down-redirection still apply. If so, the draft should be declined. But sometimes the facts have changed. For instance, the actor is now notable, and the redirect to one movie is no longer necessary. In that case, I still move the redirect to user space, and can still accept the draft, but I tag the article to have history merged from the redirect. So far, so good. Typically when the admin completes the history merge, they delete the redirect. So far, so good.

However, occasionally the history merge is denied due to parallel histories. But I have accepted the draft, and it is in article space. The redirect is now in my user space. What should I do with it? Can I request that it be deleted? Should I create a museum to put the redirect in? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:37, 11 March 2021 (UTC)


 * History merging is perfect for merging the extractable list of authors. That would work for even parallel histories, but the result would be horrible.
 * Is there a list of authors in the draft that are not in the article? I suggest excluding minor and bot edits, as non-creative and not requiring attribution.  If the answer is "no", it doesn't matter.
 * If there are creative authors of the drafts, whose content was merged to the article, then some effort is required to record that attribution. You could ask the author to edit the article.  Some suggest noting the author name in a dummy edit summary.  Some suggest noting author names on the talk page.  I think these last two ideas are unlikely to see the author recognized downstream.
 * What should you do with the redirect with history? This sounds similar to the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Proposed_article_mergers.  I suggest moving the redirect into mainspace, because downstream uses of Wikipedia might discard other namespaces such as draft or user.  Someone disagreed, but I think the disagreement was just on the strength of the recommendation, they don't think it should sound as if required.
 * Moving the redirect to mainspace, to a title such as Article (old parallel history) might keep it safe from random deletion of implausible redirects. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:01, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:SmokeyJoe - You answered me quickly, for which I thank you, before I could provide an example.
 * Here is an example: Sophie and the Giants, with a redirect currently in User:Robert McClenon/Sophie and the Giants.  Does your answer cover SATG?  Robert McClenon (talk) 05:19, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * My first thought, which is not necessarily my best thought, as to what should be done would be to merge in the history before 21 February and let the later history (of expanding the redirect back to a stub and then being cut down again) be dropped onto the floor.
 * So does someone have an idea for what to do with this redirect in my user space that goes to a song by the band? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:26, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't like thinking about permastub small band articles, but I'll try. There is an issue with .  Why does User:Robert McClenon/Sophie and the Giants not redirect to Sophie and the Giants, but to Hypnotized (Purple Disco Machine and Sophie and the Giants song)?  Are they both independently notable?  Why are they reference bombed?  Why is it in your userspace, and not in draftspace?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:SmokeyJoe - You asked questions. Here are some would-be answers.

Sort-of-Answers to Sort-of-Questions by User:SmokeyJoe
You said that there is an issue with Jamesdarcywiki. Yes, but the question is one that there is no procedure for asking, which is whether someone else is behind the account. If we see the user account come out of a duck egg but don't know who the duck or drake were, there is no SPI.

Why are they reference-bombed? You, SmokeyJoe, probably know that. There is a myth in Wikipedia that more references are the secret to passing notability. Are Hypnotized and Sophie and the Giants both independently notable? I don't know. I didn't review the song. It was already in article space when I reviewed the band. Is the band independently notable? I think so, which is why I accepted it.

Why is the redirect in my user space? Because I moved it from Sophie and the Giants to my user space. Why did I move it from article space to my user space? To accept the draft. The redirect was blocking my acceptance of the draft, so I moved it. If it had had only trivial history, I would have then tagged it for G6, and it would have been swept away. That is what I do with drafts that should be accepted, but a redirect is blocking the acceptance move. The alternative would be to tag the redirect and wait for it to be deleted by an admin, but that sometimes takes 24 hours, during which I am doing other things. Since the redirect had non-trivial history, I moved it to my user space, and tagged it for history merge rather than for speedy deletion. If the history merge is then completed, the history-merging admin deletes the orphaned redirect. But the history merge was declined, and the redirect is still where I put it, in my user space.

Should I leave it there until 2038? Should I tag it for G6? If so, what flavor of G6? Should I move it to the user space of a user who does not exist? Should I move it to the user space of Jamesdarcywiki, who may or may not exist? Should I move it to Museum: space? Those are the questions. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Why not just move it to SATG tagged R from acronym (per the first line of the article) or Sophie and the Giants (band) tagged R from unnecessary disambiguation? In either location, replace R with possibilities with R with history.  I don't know if you ever browse the subproject WP:AFC/R, but there are boatloads of redirects that get created to the same page... To make room for an article, I recently made this move without a redirect instead of just asking for a deletion. -2pou (talk) 22:32, 11 March 2021 (UTC)


 * No, no, no, no, no. I have declined enough of these (histmerge requests) and I'm sorry I haven't said anything before. If a page is a redirect, and there is a draft with different (or significantly different) content in its history, then whether you move-then-G6 or just G6 and wait for it to be deleted, it does not need to be histmerged. People think that history merging, for some wild reason that I have yet to figure out, is for "there was a page, now there's a new one on the same subject, so let's bung them together!!!!" No. No. No. Histmerging is for when someone copy/pastes a page without attribution and we need to reverse that. If there is/was no copy/paste, then there is no need for a histmerge.
 * That being said, unless something absolutely must be moved right away, it's likely better to keep the existing page where it is, ask for a db-move, and accept the draft after it's been deleted. That way, if there are questions or concerns about the old/now-deleted history of the page, it's in the deleted history (rather than having to track down where it might have been moved in the meantime). This isn't necessarily any sort of hard requirement or edict, but from a "I need to find a diff" perspective it certainly makes things easier. Primefac (talk) 23:12, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. I used to go through the G6 cat a few times a day, and then stopped, but if desired I can start that up again to speed along db-move requests for draft submissions. Primefac (talk) 23:13, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Primefac - The reason why there are being these requests that you are complaining about is that the instructions seem to call for history merge. The instructions for G6 to permit a page move say that G6 is applicable if the redirect has a minor history.  The redirects in question have major history, but it isn't the result of copy-paste or anything similar.  So some of us believe the instructions, and think that they mean that such redirects should be history-merged.  If you are saying that they can be deleted, that is helpful.  Maybe the instructions should be revised.  Thank you.  Robert McClenon (talk) 04:49, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I have tagged the redirect in question for U1. If anyone thinks that it should be preserved, they can contest the speedy deletion and move it to wherever.  Robert McClenon (talk) 04:49, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Having refreshed my memory of Requested_moves/Closing_instructions (which is what's linked from WP:G6) it appears that the appropriate thing to do when dealing with these sorts of "major history" overwrites is a page swap. In other words, once you've moved it to your userspace (suppressing the redirect) and approved the draft, you should move the original redirect in your userspace to the Draft space and redirect it to the new article.
 * Speaking from my personal experience, though, I have rarely (if ever) seen this sort of thing done (the original redirect/page is deleted and the new page moved over top of it), so it might be worth having a discussion at WT:RM about revising the instructions (because instructions should follow common practice, or common practice should be modified to match the instructions). Primefac (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Robert McClenon, I’m not sure if there are still questions here you’d like me to answer. I’m not sure I understand the questions. If anything I wrote conflicts with what Primefac wrote, then I’m in error or poorly expressed, because what he wrote is my understanding, except that I don’t do history merges.  Guessing some open questions: I think it undesirable for you to move others’ non-trivial edit histories into your userspace, and my preference, without going through the difficulties, is that all good faith mainspace contribution to continuing topics be preserved in mainspace.  At MfD we have caused some history merges to occur that weren’t strictly required, but they did repair a copy-paste error.  I have a wish that new page creations in mainspace would be auto-analysed for copying from the matching title in draftspace or userspace, but was told this is a non-trivial wish. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:08, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * “ move it to the user space of Jamesdarcywiki”? Yes, that sounds like a fair idea.  He, and only he, can then delete it do-u1 at any time.  “who may or may not exist”?  If it’s his edit history, the account necessarily exists.  Unless he vanished? You can still follow the rename. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:11, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Red link category
Hello, AFC,

I was wondering if you could tell what in the AFC tagging was causing some submitted drafts to be placed in Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days' time category? It seems like this must be a mistake because if this category was used by the AFC crew, it would already exist so there must be a mistake in the tagging. Thanks. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 18:07, 13 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi Liz just tested and if the submission time of submit is in the future they appear to go in there. Why they stay is due to above so a null edit clears them out. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 18:32, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Anelasticity
Here is a somewhat different case where I would like another opinion. I looked at Draft:Anelasticity. I then requested a review at WikiProject Physics. A reviewer said that they didn't see anything wrong with it, but that it was so poorly written that they didn't think it was ready for acceptance. I went ahead and accepted it because it is more likely to be improved in article space than in draft space. I remember that one of the tests for AFC is whether the draft, as an article, has more than a 50% chance of being kept on AFD. In physics, my concerns would be whether the topic is notable (and I can usually see that for myself), whether the topic is within the scope of another topic or duplicated (which it is not, because there is only one sentence about anelasticity in viscoelasticity), and whether the paper is by a crackpot. And a chemist won't always recognize a crackpot physicist. So, based on the comment that it was poorly written, but otherwise had no obvious problems, I accepted it. What does anyone think? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:58, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Physicists, typically unemployed undereducated theoretical physicists, are the worst at creating stuff that it more work to debunk than it is worth. For them specifically, the policy WP:NOR was written. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:20, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * An overview exists: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/anelasticity
 * The word base occurs in many Wikipedia articles. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Anelastic&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns0=1
 * It’s probably real. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:23, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:SmokeyJoe - I wasn't asking whether it was real. I knew it was real.  It was already mentioned in viscoelasticity.  The question was whether the paper should be accepted, and the conclusion is that sometimes a paper is better improved in article space than in draft space.  Also, if the community is to be asked whether a paper is pseudoscience, that can sometimes be better addressed at AFD than elsewhere.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:56, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * By "It’s probably real", I think I meant that I would accept it too. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:18, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Another History Merge Question
I have another history merge question that is quite different. There is a situation which is technically a copy-paste move, and in which some reviewers do apply a history-merge tag. An example can be seen at Draft:Carolina Hurricanes Storm Squad and Carolina Hurricanes Storm Squad, unless it can no longer be seen because of whatever. An editor created the draft, in maybe ten steps, and submitted it. The same editor then copied the draft into article space. The defining characteristic of this case is that the same editor created the draft, and then the article. When I see that, I do NOT request history merge, because there is no contention as to who wrote what, because the same editor wrote both. In the specific case, I have nominated the article for deletion, but that is a separate issue. I commonly see the same editor create a draft and then an article. I decline the article with a template notice about creating the same article in draft space and article space. I also usually do a before AFD check on the article, because very often when an editor creates two copies in draft space and article space, they are trying to game the system.

So: Is a history merge in order when the draft and the article were the work of the same editor? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:01, 13 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Carolina Hurricanes Storm Squad was copy-pasted by . Noting the page has zero subsequent non-trivial edits to content, I would tag it db-g12, and post a note at User_talk:Bentheswimmer11 explaining and asking him to desist from copy-pasting. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:17, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree with your disregard for User:MB’s edits. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:20, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

It’s my own article that was originally relocated into the draft space because it had no citations at the time. I made additions to the draft and added citations. I didn’t know that moving the page was an actual thing and I didn’t want to wait 4 months for my article to finish posting so I just copied and pasted. Bentheswimmer11 (talk) 06:29, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Common. I think it is an unintended consequence of hiding the “Move” tab for new accounts. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:46, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Well. I was originally trying to ask whether it was necessary to do a history merge when duplicate copies of a promotional article were submitted in draft space and article space.  I wasn't planning to hear from the promoter, and the article appears to be headed for deletion.  So I will ask again when I see another example.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:12, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

History Merge Question (again)
I will ask this question yet again, just to be sure that I understand the answer, because I think it is important. The example at this time is Draft:Dylan Conrique and Dylan Conrique. There was a poorly sourced article on this actress. I think that she may have a fan club. The article was then cut down to a redirect. There is now also a draft, Draft:Dylan Conrique. I will try to word this question carefully. If a draft on Conrique is submitted that satisfies biographical notability, should a history merge be done, or a page swap, or what? The draft will be declined, because it is also undersourced, and it only describes one major role, not two or more. However, the question happens often enough that I think I should get clarifying guidance, whether from User:Primefac or someone else. Would this be a history merge case, or not? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:20, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * In this particular case, if the draft is accepted then the article/redirect should just be deleted. This is because there is only one editor with any substantive editing on the article, and thus the copy from article to draft requires no attribution to "previous editors", and what's left is not substantive enough to merit keeping. Primefac (talk) 18:53, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Primefac - Thank you.  That answers my previous question also, which is that no history merge is required when the draft and the article were created by the same editor.  I have seen some cases, including the one listed just above, where an editor creates a draft, then, after a period of time, the editor copy-pastes the draft into article space, and then a reviewer, in good faith, requests a history merge.  I had thought that this was a good-faith error, and that no history merge was needed if the same editor did the draft and the article.  Please respond only if I have misunderstood.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:28, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Fan Clubs
I have written an essay about fan clubs who try to publicize "their" star in Wikipedia, at Fan Clubs. I would appreciate comments. Since it is in project space, constructive improvements are welcome. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:20, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Bugs, please
My efforts earlier this year to get more developers working on the helper script worked, and there are currently at least 3 new developers working on various issues. (There are more, but 3 actively communicate with me.) I am now in the bizarre position of having nearly run out of easy bugs to give them. If you know of any bugs with the script, especially ones that seem relatively easy to fix or aren't already in the issue tracker, please let me know here or on my talk page. Thanks! Enterprisey (talk!) 10:26, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I can think of one bug, and one small feature suggestion. I'll make some tickets on GitHub. Great script, by the way. – Novem Linguae (talk) 10:51, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Unsigned AFC comments get duplicated with further script action. See Draft:Samuray Cuba as an example. This is the same bug first noticed with the (now deleted) AFC Comment parameters. Fiddle   Faddle  12:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. I've re-opened that issue. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Reporting a bug. Per here, declining a deleted submission will create the submission, which is undesirable.  This happens when the page is deleted while the submission is being declined (e.g. typing the decline message).  There are probably more situations where creating the page is undesirable that I have not encountered yet.
 * I think this can probably be fixed by setting  to.
 * Hopefully this is useful. ~ Ase1este charge-paritytime 16:30, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Good call, fixed that by setting nocreate only on draft-space pages. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:26, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , When two reviewers review at identical times there can be an underlying issue whereby the later edit happens to the draft, both edits take place on the user talk page, and only one appears in the edit history of the draft
 * An example is Draft:Boris Berenfeld and User talk:Hzyaz (the submitting editor)
 * I wonder if this is an underlying MW issue with edit conflicts/file lockig etc. Fiddle   Faddle  08:48, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's https://github.com/WPAFC/afch-rewrite/issues/153. Edit conflict detection is nonexistent. I've been wanting to get to it for a while now - probably just using the appropriate API params (baserevid, basetimestamp, starttimestamp) would get most of the way there. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:21, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * An example is Draft:Boris Berenfeld and User talk:Hzyaz (the submitting editor)
 * I wonder if this is an underlying MW issue with edit conflicts/file lockig etc. Fiddle   Faddle  08:48, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's https://github.com/WPAFC/afch-rewrite/issues/153. Edit conflict detection is nonexistent. I've been wanting to get to it for a while now - probably just using the appropriate API params (baserevid, basetimestamp, starttimestamp) would get most of the way there. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:21, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's https://github.com/WPAFC/afch-rewrite/issues/153. Edit conflict detection is nonexistent. I've been wanting to get to it for a while now - probably just using the appropriate API params (baserevid, basetimestamp, starttimestamp) would get most of the way there. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:21, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Afc guidelines for multiple drafts on the same topic
How should AFC deal with the issue of multiple drafts on the identical topic? This seems to be happening increasingly lately, in response to current events or social media buzz. I'd like to spark a discussion about this here. Bullet 1 of Afc about article creation, says: "Is it already covered in an existing article?" but does not ask whether it is already covered in an existing Draft. Even if it did, I suspect that many creators of Drafts are much more familiar with Google search than they are with WP Advanced Search, and Google search does not return results from the Draft namespace.

Sometimes, multiple articles on the same topic are created almost simultaneously, in response to events in the news or trends on social media. For a current example of drafts created in response to one trending buzzword, see these four drafts: (one, two, three, four). These were all created within the last few days, all on the same topic; two of them have been reviewed already. Multiple drafts like these need to be transparently linked in some way, to inform AFC reviewers of the others, and to prevent reviewers from needlessly duplicating effort, or from independently reviewing the same topic in multiple incarnations at the same time.

I thought of various possibilities. I'm not an AFC reviewer, so I'll just throw some ideas out here, and open this to discussion by the AFC community, to come up with some sort of approach that works best for you. Here are some: What do you all think? Does anything need to be done at all? I think I'm in favor of #4. I'm a template writer, so if that ends up being the consensus, I can help. (I might mock something up so there's something to look at, while considering this alternative.) Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 19:36, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) Add a section on the Talk page of each draft linking them, called something like, "List of drafts on this topic" or similar. (Or in order to prevent fragmentation, perhaps better on only one of the Draft talk pages, with a brief section on the other Draft talk pages with a link pointing to the draft with the complete list.) This was my initial approach in this case; see here (although I haven't linked that section from the other Draft talk pages yet).
 * 2) Add an AFC comment to each Draft, naming all the others. I had considered this, but as I'm not an Afc reviewer, I hesitated, since I'm not sure what kind of process is used for Afc comments, and maybe this would be a misuse of it.
 * 3) Create a custom template just for this purpose: Linked drafts or some such, which might be a low-vertical profile mashup of Merge to, Afc comment and Draft.  This would be aimed at the Draft page itself, either above, below, or mixed in with the Afc comments, but with a slightly different look-and-feel, so it wasn't missed by reviewers.
 * 4) Combination of #2 and 3: one discussion, plus a template; following the pattern of Merge to.
 * 5) Don't link them; let reviewers review them independently.
 * 6) Something else.
 * That has previously been discussed above, though from more of a "gaming" perspective. We already have AfC sorting (AFCSORT) (approach #1) for what it's worth. The issue I see here is knowing there are other drafts on the same subject, which is I suppose where AFCSORT comes in useful. Otherwise, just... accept the good ones and decline the not-so-good? Primefac (talk) 20:22, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * As User:Primefac says, there are at least two variants of this situation, the honest one where a topic or person attracts attention, and the gamey one. However, in either case, if I become aware, my approach is to comment on the drafts, select one as the target, and put merge templates on them.  Then review can wait until the drafts are merged.  Of course, the reviewer doesn't always know that there are other drafts, and searching for other drafts isn't a standard part of the reviewing check list.  Should it be?  I don't think so, but maybe reviewers should be aware that this sometimes happens.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:24, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The only time I would think about a draft potentially being a duplicate is if there is a (2) after it, or disambiguation (though generally a dab modifier is more indicative of there being an existing primary topic in the article space). Primefac (talk) 01:59, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, yes, I missed that other conversation, thanks. And yes, the only issue I am trying to raise here, is transparency, and awareness of other drafts. I did consider using Merge templates, but that seemed premature for something that isn't even an article; as in: why would anyone bother doing the actual work of a merge, for something that might not ever become an article? That's why my idea of a Linked drafts template, to take the pressure off the work, or even the suggestion, that they should actually be merged, and merely signaling the existence of other drafts. Maybe I'll try something with my use case example, and we can see how that goes. Mathglot (talk) 03:46, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I had a thought. What if we make it the rule that the first-in-time draft will be deemed the primary draft, and any later drafts created on an identical topic will be moved to a talk space sub-page of that draft, with a note on the primary that additional content may be found on the subpage. Presumably, if the primary draft is ever approved for mainspace, all the subpages will move with it. BD2412 T 02:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Merging would be what I'd prefer. I've run into this a lot with users creating a draft, then creating a second one in their sandbox after the first is declined. I'm often tempted to merge them since many are practically identical. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  12:29, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with User:ReaderofthePack that I have seen new drafts created in the sandbox after the first one was declined. I think that this is due to some good-faith confusion or inability on the part of the submitter.  They may think that they are required to submit from the sandbox, or they may not know how to modify a draft.  I think what is important in such cases is, first, that we, the reviewers, be patient, and, second, we remind them that help is available at the Teahouse.  Those are good rules for any submitter who is honestly confused, and they aren't bad rules for other submitters.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:01, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * are you truly in favor of merging Drafts? Merging articles can be quite involved, and except for tiny stubs, I can't imagine spending my time merging decent-sized drafts, without knowing if they'll ever become an article. I think my approach would be: pick the one that is most likely to meet the bar of submission and get that one approved for main space, and *then* see about a possible merge. Merging drafts seems like a time sink with an uncertain prognosis of any future ROI to me. Mathglot (talk) 19:53, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Mathglot - Am I in favor of merging drafts? Compared to what?  As a reviewer, if it isn't clear on first glance whether the subject is biographically notable, I would rather review one draft than multiple drafts.  There are several different situations in which there are multiple drafts.  The most common is that the drafts are spam.  In that case, I can decline or reject them all, and may send them to MFD in a bundle.  That isn't pleasant, but it is necessary.  Another situation is where the submitter creates a new draft rather than updating the old draft.  In that case, the real problem is that the submitter is creating extra work.  In that case, the reviewer only wants one draft, and it is up to the submitter to submit what they want.  In the third case, the drafts appear to come either from a fan club, or from multiple editors who read the same newspaper or other reliable source.  If it isn't obvious on first glance that one of them should be accepted, and which one, the reviewer wants the multiple submitters to pull one draft together.  If you think that means that the reviewers are shifting the work off to the submitters, that is true.  That is the situation in which I want the submitters to merge drafts and give me one draft before I review it.  Is that asking them to do our work for us?  I think it is asking them to do their own work for us.  Is that sort of an answer?  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:44, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , it's a great answer, thanks. As long as it's not on you, or other reviewers, to be expected to bear the burden, I think it's fine; so shifting the work to the submitters is exactly what should happen. Do they really take that on, or feel proprietary about their own drafts, I wonder? Mathglot (talk) 01:04, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Usually neither. The end result then is G13 in six months.  Robert McClenon (talk) 02:18, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I like that rule. Drafters should be expected to start with a Wikipedia content search for their topic.  I can see the rule being scriptable.  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:16, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I like it as well. That makes it a lot easier to maintain. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  11:38, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * My only concern is that sometimes the second (or fourth) draft will be much better. Usually this is when there are parallel drafts being created by different editors in their sandboxes without knowing the other one exists. In those cases I'll generally redirect to and/or indicate that the newer draft is the one that should be worked on (Clarification: I will always promote/encourage improvements on the "better" draft, regardless of age). In other words, I don't think we should have a hard-and-fast rule simply making the "first!" poster the primary page, especially as it would encourage some folks to try and snipe every possible new draft title (sound silly? there are three recent AN threads on this exact issue). Primefac (talk) 12:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Primefac, will always promote/encourage improvements on the "better" draft, regardless of age. My concerns with that are:
 * 1. This is rewarding content-forking;
 * 2. This may fail attribution requirements, very likely fail attribution best practices. The later better drafter could have (and I prefer should be expected to have) read the older draft, and by merely having read the earlier draft, the later draft should be assumed to have picked up on some earlier draft creative contribution, and so the author(s) of the older draft should be acknowledged as authors.
 * In support of defaulting to the oldest draft, a better drafter of a newer draft should be quite capable of merging their newer work onto the old.
 * Sometimes the older draft will be worthless, and the new drafter justifiably wants to discard it entirely and start again. We could add instructions for the new drafter for this situation: Start your new draft; redirect the old draft to the new draft with an edit summary "redrafting afresh; no attribution from the old draft required".
 * there are three recent AN threads on this exact issue. WP:AN is an awful page to browse-search things.  Can you link them please?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:05, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Can't find the third (I feel like it either spilled to ANI or an off-topic thread at a PERM page), but 1 and 2. If you really want I can pull up diffs from the Ss112/FWTH drama from before the latter's indef, but it was much the same (controversial moves/creations in order to "get credit").
 * I won't disagree that we shouldn't be encouraging folks to go the abandon-and-restart route, and I understand your concerns re: attribution, but the drafts I'm referring to are very often clearly separate pages where the creators did not know the other one existed, and there is no question that there are no attribution issues. Primefac (talk) 12:47, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Request for Sanity Check
I found Draft:Peter John Graham and Peter John Graham. It appears that, after two or three months in review, the draft was copy-pasted by a different editor into article space. I tagged it for history merge. Will someone please verify that in this case this is what history merge is for, that I did understand it correctly? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:53, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Definitely a copy/paste move. Seems to be what history merges are designed for as well. In this case: Notaeditor101 not attributing credit to the draft contributors. -2pou (talk) 06:14, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Finally, a cut-and-dry cut-and-paste situation. Merged. Primefac (talk) 12:40, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * If you factor out the "cut", I think that makes it a paste-and-dry situation. Mathglot (talk) 18:58, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hah! Though more accurately, a . :-p Primefac (talk) 20:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Georgia-Lithuania relations
Let's see if I have done this one right. Draft:Georgia-Lithuania relations was submitted, and articles on bilateral relations between nations are normally considered notable. There was a redirect from the title to Foreign relations of Georgia (country). (Duh. States of the US do not have foreign relations.)  So I had to move the redirect out of the way to accept it, but the redirect has history. So I have swapped the former redirect into draft space and pointed it at the article. Is that correct?

But the acceptance of the draft created a page-move redirect. Can I suppress redirect creation when accepting a draft using the AFCH script? (I know that I can do a move, but that requires cleanup afterwards.)

So is that how history should b ehandled in such cases? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:41, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, looks good. Primefac (talk) 20:24, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest Template
An editor has nominated the COI template and two other templates for deletion. If you either use these templates in reviewing and want to keep them or encounter these templates in reviewing and dislike them or have any other opinion on them, you may participate in the Templates for Discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:24, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Duplicate references
Hi all, is there any practical way to consolidate duplicate references? I want to review Draft:Norwich Women’s Film Weekend but the amount of duplicates in the reference section makes it hard to get a good overview of the source situation. I should have figured this out some time ago but somehow never did. Thanks, Modussiccandi (talk) 22:06, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Modussiccandi I think what your looking for is reFill see User:Zhaofeng Li/reFill. Just be careful as it mostly gets things correct but sometimes goes bad: such as adding misread junk... usually to "first" and "last" fields; also some sites redirect to a login so you loose the actual target (such as instagram) so need manual fixup (or remove if not a valid source). Hope that helps. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 12:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. I've used reFill in the past but I didn't realise it could solve this kind of issue. The advice is much appreciated. Best, Modussiccandi (talk) 13:16, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

April editathons from Women in Red
--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:15, 22 March 2021 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Idea (but extra work)
Hey all, back from a brief respite and definitely taking on less of a massive workload here. Thanks to all our reviewers here for doing the hard work every day to get through the backlog.

In the past, drafts will come through AFC that are from WikiEd courses, or Edit-a-thons, both of which have a large number of new, inexperienced users. I'm wondering if there is a better way to strengthen the connection between our project and theirs so that new users in those projects are more aware of what we are looking for when we review articles for notability, tone and sources.

Unfortunately, the only idea I can think of is for reviewers to be available as a resource in each of these individual endeavors, which would be a massive time-sink for those involved, especially since (hopefully) we all have lives outside of WP. If anyone can think of a better solution to this, I'd love to help brainstorm. Bkissin (talk) 16:14, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I've always been surprised that the people who organise these things don't organise to have several experienced editors to advise and review themselves (either via AfC or manually checked and moved to main-space). As with specialist topic such as the last Korean Literature issue recently it seams a ridiculous over-site not too ask the related wiki project to be involved. It does seem with some of these that they do little more than encourage writing with clearly not enough emphasis on the basic notability requirements or even checked the article does not already exist. A WikiEd course or edit-a-thon should start with clear instructions of check it does not exist then gather sources to show notability and get that validated as an idea before even attempting to write any text. KylieTastic (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , I'm firmly with you here. Thank you for reminding us of the mess after the Korean Literature fest where balls were dropped.
 * I think it must become the organiser's responsibility to quality assure and accept the welter of material created. This material should go nowhere near AFC in my view  Fiddle   Faddle  17:32, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I remember there was a source at WikiEd that we've reached out to before, but I can't remember his name or else I'd ping him on this topic. Bkissin (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's yet another one of those things that if the project was in a more functional state (i.e. only a week or few backlog) then hooking up with these events to help would be something I'd be up for. However the reality is we are back up to 5 month backlog and growing every day so it's not fair on the reviewers, the current submitters or those that join an event expecting rapid results. I had thought this was an AfC issue but it looks like the NPP backlog has been growing, reports to WP:AIV are far to often being junked as "Stale" (something I've only realised existed recently), and WP:SPI is very backlogged (as well as I'm sure other projects are). IMHO what we need to do is work on ways to streamline things and reduce the work here to stop the utter junk, copy vios, attack pages, blatant promotion but not be a frustrating block to well meaning submitters. KylieTastic (talk) 19:18, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's yet another one of those things that if the project was in a more functional state (i.e. only a week or few backlog) then hooking up with these events to help would be something I'd be up for. However the reality is we are back up to 5 month backlog and growing every day so it's not fair on the reviewers, the current submitters or those that join an event expecting rapid results. I had thought this was an AfC issue but it looks like the NPP backlog has been growing, reports to WP:AIV are far to often being junked as "Stale" (something I've only realised existed recently), and WP:SPI is very backlogged (as well as I'm sure other projects are). IMHO what we need to do is work on ways to streamline things and reduce the work here to stop the utter junk, copy vios, attack pages, blatant promotion but not be a frustrating block to well meaning submitters. KylieTastic (talk) 19:18, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Oh and welcome back Bkissin hope your feeling refreshed and have managed to purge the negativity of the moaners :) KylieTastic (talk) 20:10, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks ! We'll see how long it lasts, lol. I totally agree with your assessment and you are absolutely right about streamlining processes, especially when something WP:QUACKs particularly loudly. I wonder if it is a question of morale of project participants, trust in new users, a seemingly endless appeals process, or what. Thankfully we are WP:NOTFACEBOOK in the sense that it is personal quality control and not dictated by algorithm, but I still wonder what we can do keep chugging through these collective backlogs. (Though now we are getting off this particular topic! :) ) Bkissin (talk) 21:28, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: Give submitters direct visual feedback on Un-reliable sources
I'm not sure if this is even possible, but I was thinking that it would be good if something like (or actually use) Headbombs colour highlighting script for unreliable sources (User:Headbomb/unreliable) on every Draft page by default. Then submitters at least would see bad sources highlighted as such and it hopefully would improve submissions.

Ideally I would like to see something like implemented in main-space but then the script and source regex lists would probably need to be under admin control like the backlist is. However maybe Draft would be a good place to test the idea and I can't see any downside to this as all it does is point out consensus issues about some sources and, in Draft at least, does not impact readers. KylieTastic (talk) 20:08, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd be against that, unless the big warning caveats was displayed on the draft. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:13, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey Headbomb, do you mean against using your version, or any version even with admin control? If the first I can see why you wouldn't want but if the later then why? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 20:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Any version. No automated script can cleanly categorize sources in YES/NO/MAYBE bins. They're all maybes. The first step in determining if a source is reliable is to ask reliable for what. Scripts can't do that. That's why both WP:CITEWATCH and WP:UPSD have big disclaimers outlining the limitations of these script and that you still need to use your brain. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:49, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The script is surely not categorizing anything just highlighting things as decided by consensus as per WP:RSPSOURCES. All your script does is highlight some sources and point to the reason why when you hover over. I agree that unlike your script that is hardcoded it would ideal to have it changed to be like the blacklisted sources with a separate controlled list, and maybe only marks the more extreme cases. Also the wording needs to be careful to not over state the case - not that I feel yours does at the moment. It's just tiresome having endless daily submission with junk sources and having to point submitters at WP:DAILYMAIL, WP:IMDB, WP:ANCESTRY.COM or explain why Crunchbase, Discogs, Facebook etc are not considered by the consensus as valid/reliable (especially for notability). As a submitter I would rather have possible issues indicated straight away than wait 4 months to be told all/most of your sources are no good see WP:RSPSOURCES try again and wait 4 months. KylieTastic (talk) 22:04, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I think newcomer drafters are already drowning in too much advice. More means less will be read.  More de-focuses the importance of the WP:GNG, which reviewers know well, and is the basis for declining most stuff.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:35, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Request for Help at Draft talk:Tom Aikens (restaurant)
We have an article on Tom Aikens, a chef, and on Tom Aikens (restaurant). Where I got involved is that submitted a draft, Draft:Tom Aikens (restaurant). It is longer than the existing article. I reviewed the draft, but the article already exists, so I compared the draft and the article. I declined the draft as 'exists', but tagged the draft to be merged into the article. I then was pinged to the draft talk page by George Ho, who asked whether I had rejected the draft because the article exists. I tried to explain that I agree that there should be an article on the chef and a separate article on the restaurant. However, it seems that I haven't succeeded in explaining the situation. It appears that a few weeks ago, tried to redirect the restaurant article to the chef article, and was, in my opinion, correctly, reverted by. I am not sure that I understand yet, but I think that George Ho still thinks that the restaurant should not have a separate article. He also apparently thinks that I have advised him to request a history merge, which would be completely off the wall. Can someone else please take a look at the articles and at the interaction on the draft talk page, and either explain to George Ho, or explain to me what George Ho wants?

I will try to explain one more time, but it appears either that I don't understand something, or that George Ho has some mistaken impression. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:20, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Sweep
A new project is starting up to review really old neglected articles at WikiProject Sweep. Participants here are welcome to sign up or contribute to planning. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:51, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

"But, Tim, what we do is hard enough already..."
Yup, no argument there. And maybe this should just be a suggestion, or a reminder, or an 'I never thought of that'.

We review quite a few good drafts and we accept them. The thing is, I think the pictures used to populate a draft are part of the same job. Accept or decline, I follow the picture, almost always to Commons, and I see a great deal of very poor upload rationales and many downright lies. So O nominate them for:


 * Permission needed
 * Obvious copyvio
 * Some other deletion method

And then I look at the uploader's contributions and use a Commons batch task to bulk nominate any other candidate files for one of those three things. See c:Help:VisualFileChange.js available if you have the correct status. That status may be requestedm and I think is autopatrolled.

You may see it differently. I think that we need to go all the way, whcih is not a huge amount of extra fun.

I have three deletion rationales I use for commons, found from other people's use there:


 * No evidence that the image is under an acceptable free licence. Ownership or possession of a photo, proprietorship of the equipment used to take the photo, or being the subject of the photo does not equate holding the copyright. The copyright holder is the photographer (i.e. the person who took the photo), rather that the subject (the person who appears in the photo) or the person possessing the photo, unless transferred by operation of law (e.g. inheritance, etc.) or by contract (written and signed by the copyright holder, and explicitly transfers the copyright).


 * Pictures without camera details tend to be suspect. We require a very much better declaration of source and/or permissions. See COM:OTRS. Potential copyright violation


 * FBMD in metadata. Unlikely to be own work. Copyvio? Correct permission is required See COM:OTRS

These rationales are also suitable for consideration for files on Wikipedia that have not been/will not be uploaded to Commons

So I present this to you, not in any way seeking to criticise if you disagree with me, as something we, you, may consider doing for the future. You may be doing it already. Fiddle  Faddle  12:43, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Better guidelines on creation of articles
I am thinking we should go to requiring that every article be created by a registered editor. I also think that we should require that all editors submit their first new article through the Articles for Creation process, and we should not allow them to create any other new articles until they have successfully had one proposed article created through the AfC process.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Opening question - can you list a couple of problematic articles that this solution resolves? I'm also confused, because we already insist editors are confirmed before creating articles. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  17:50, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the suggestions is that IP editors should not be allowed to submit drafts for review and that registered editors should submit their first article through AfC regardless of confirmation status. Modussiccandi (talk) 17:59, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , they have to be confirmed so that they can create articles, so I agree on Ritchie333, this confuses me as well. I sure do agree that non-confirmed users should not be allowed to submit articles if previously have not successfully submitted one via AfC. But this seem to be unrealistic because with an impressive backlog of 4,000 articles that could mean that new editors would have to wait months before they can submit their next article. CommanderWaterford (talk) 22:57, 17 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I have seen clearly non-notable low qaulity articles created by people who lack an actual account in recent times, so I am less than convinced that the claimed need to be confirmed users is working.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Again - can you list a couple of problematic articles that this solution resolves? If the problem is as serious as you describe, it should take a couple of minutes. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  12:58, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Wai Thu La Pyae is just one of several articles created by a single issue action editor that was in no way even close to our guidelines. New editors should not be rushing into creating articles in their first move, so making them wait 4 months to create a second article is not really a bad thing. There are lots and lots and lots of examples where a new account is created, the person creates an article, and then we never see them do anything else. The number of articles sourced only to the webpage of the subject, or not sourced at all is staggering.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:03, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Jiyas Jamal is another example of extremely low levels of contribution by the article creator before creating the article and a highly questionable article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Aman Singh Thind is an article whose creator seems to have turned out that article which is up for deletion, and another article which is tagged because it may have been created for undisclosed payments.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * On a more basic level the fact that articles can be created with one edit and unilaterally with no input but they must be deleted by complex processes is problematic and leads to getting lots of sub-standard, not even close to meeting the guidelines articles that exist for over a decade. At a minimum we should create a system where all new articles have to go through at least a reverse prod process, which would mean for the first week anyone could say they disagree with them for any reason or no clear reason, and then the article would have to be created through the normal AfC process, but any article that lasted a week on the reverse prod process could then go into main space without having to go through the full AfC, but every single article would need to go through this. When I can without every trying find Rastriya Higher Secondary School which has existed for over four and a half years without any sources, and the article creator has 2 edits, both of them on that page, we have a problem.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Implementing this would certainly stop the same old sockpuppet trolls like Arman from posting their hoaxes in mainspace every 5 days. See Amir Mahmoodi, Amir Mahmoodi (footballer) and Amir Sarkhosh for examples of pure vandalism that would be stopped dead. There is no way that sockpuppeteers such as this guy would bother to spend time researching and writing a proper article before posting their hoax junk in mainspace and getting another indef block. Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 13:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , If an article is a hoax, how can you spend any time researching and writing a proper article? Logically, that's impossible. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  14:06, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What I meant was that some of our regular sockpuppet trolls would be deterred by this new proposed system. It's highly unlikely that they would actually bother to spend ages going through the AfC process, doing a proper non-hoax article, getting that approved and then deciding to post their Amir Mahmoodi or Ali Pour Dara or any of the other constant hoax articles that we get every week or so. We get way too many of these spammers posting spam articles, where a quick glance at their posting history made it clear from the very start that they had no intention of editing constructively. Simply not allowing them to create an article until they demonstrated some level of competence would weed out a lot of the spammers and trolls. Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 14:30, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Understand that. However, such a proposal would also knock out a lot of newcomers writing their first article for Women in Red about a significant but forgotten 19th century author, who only doesn't exist already because of Wikipedia's systemic bias. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  14:38, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * In the case of Rastriya Higher Secondary School, I declined CSD A7 because it doesn't apply to schools and suggested the tagger consider PROD or AfD instead, leaving the article unreviewed .... then nothing happened. Maybe I should have followed it up, but I assume if I don't mark something as reviewed, another NPPer will get to it and assess anyway. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  14:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I am going through Category:Educational institutions established in 2006 and this is how I am finding several of these extreme examples. Here Suawan High School is another article, that has existed in this case for 10 years and 5 months, with 0 sources, and the only edits ever done by the article creator were creating this article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:47, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * John Pack Lambert, I believe Ritchie333 was asking for examples for your claim of them being created by "people who lack an actual account" - these examples all have accounts. As for these examples WP:ACPERM requires WP:AUTOCONFIRM already, so it sounds more like your requesting this be bumped to WP:XCON (or higher). To actually make the first go via AfC would be probably difficult to implement and also some would create one simple notable article to be able to create spam. The big concern for any change is that AfC is already failing due to lack of volunteer reviewers causing massive backlogs that discourage users. KylieTastic (talk) 14:01, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * , Suawan High School predates WP:ACPERM - I think I'd want examples after that was turned on in May 2018 onwards. It's a big problem, indeed one of Wikipedia's biggest, the articles sit in an unloved and incomplete state for years and years and years; and it's not just new articles, but core articles as well. However, as long as there is no policy to delete or otherwise take action on an article simply because it's quality now is not very good, and while the WMF focus on increasing the editor count over increasing the overall article quality, this situation will remain. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  14:18, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, I will try to make a more clear proposal. I think all new users should have to submit their first newly created article to AfC. They would not be allowed to create any articles not through AfC until the first article they had submitted to AfC had been approved and sent to main space. I know there is a current backlog there, but if we make it more central to overall processes it will probably lead to more participantion of all kinds.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:05, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that a single AfC reviewer then become the de facto granter of article creation "permission". For too many cases, GNG and 50/50 pass is subjective at best. I'm not sure this would pass. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 14:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I know the first articles I created were redirects and categories; do we really want those getting bogged down in AfC? I don't think that's a reason to kill the whole idea, but I do think we should consider this. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 08:34, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Reviews by
I have just reverted this review which seems to be to be totally erroneous. The editor is indeffed as abusing multiple accounts, see block log. They are a probationary reviewer here. I'm nor sure if there is an easy way to check their reviews, but this one leads me to suspect there are more. Their talk page and archive show that edotors, me included, have highlighted some issues Fiddle   Faddle  13:35, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * They did 94 reviews all declines or 96. Maybe someone checking a random selection would be good, or we could just rely on people resubmitting. With accepts across all reviews being 16% last month they probably mostly got it correct, so hopefully only got a couple wrong so not worth the worry. KylieTastic (talk) 14:21, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , Impressive skills, thank you. I suppose it is fair to suggest that 16% of those declined ought to have been accepted. I also wonder whether they review as any of the multiple accounts they have been blocked for. I have no idea how to check that (either). Fiddle   Faddle  15:32, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The monthly query has a search so for other accounts we can say: Catorce2016 0; 481LickMocki 0; Enfaruk 0; Davion Robinson 0; Azaxgraves 0; Mariah200 0; 252Jononin 0; Μεταφερθείσα 0; Estarosmārṭ 0; Merciify 0 - So looks like no other accounts to worry about. KylieTastic (talk) 15:40, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , That reduces the problem. I think I'll leave t to others to determine what action, if any, to take. Things like this obviously bad review annoy me so my judgement may be coloured
 * Again, impressive skills! Fiddle   Faddle  15:52, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , now a sql query would be nice to show just her declined AfC Drafts ... btw: Is Quarry running for you ? I had lots of issues since yesterday. CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:29, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , 100% were declines Fiddle   Faddle  17:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , I know, thats what caught my attention 2 weeks ago or so - but I/we need a list of their AfCs in order to review them ... CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:35, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , mea culpa. I misremembered the output f the query Fiddle   Faddle  17:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You can see a list of the reviews from the second link in my original reply - this search KylieTastic (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , 👍 CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * it's working but probably on and off issues till they finish - also you have to remove any db selector (i.e. use enwiki_p;) and just put the db name in the new unlabelled box above the query. Cheers ~ KylieTastic (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , I tried the whole morning, the db name was not accepted, raised a ticket but seems like I could also write it on toilet paper...same to Refill, for days nothing happens... but thats off-topic here CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , I tried the whole morning, the db name was not accepted, raised a ticket but seems like I could also write it on toilet paper...same to Refill, for days nothing happens... but thats off-topic here CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

This deserves its own heading

 * ,, off-topic but just wanted to let you know that I am thinking of stopping till further announcement any AfC work due to recent comments I received. assuming that I am not confident with BLP Policies. CommanderWaterford (talk) 16:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , I have left a reply to your predicament om your talk page. I suggest that your feelings may be symptom of the workload you have chosen to take on because of the huge pressure of the backlog. Adding another prolific WP:CIR editor to our queue is another pressure on us all.  Courtesy ping to   Fiddle   Faddle  16:46, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , my feelings come from a preventive ArbCom Logging assuming that I am not confident treating WP:BLPBIO Policies because of 2 reverts (out of.. I dont know... several hundreds?!) I did recently with Huggle. In order to prevent this suspicion from arising in the very first place, I will simply cease my activities for the time being. CommanderWaterford (talk) 17:02, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * CommanderWaterford not surprised you got annoyed with that - they jump in assuming your aware of the issues they saw and act like you've had warnings ignored them. They call it an EW up front then later replies to you "not an EW"? I would not say they came with a calm attitude but they tell you to "please just chill, okay" and the logging seems punitive for not immediately capitulating. I've backed off from AfC for a bit anyway as just had enough with things (here and IRL). KylieTastic (talk) 17:57, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It happens . Remember that this is not our job and that we have lives outside of this site and make the most of it. When I took a hiatus, I tried to assist other projects (adding coordinates or categories) and that helped (slightly). I'll take a look at the comments you're receiving and will respond later with a way to deal with those! :) Bkissin (talk) 16:57, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Bot running required to take over from User:Joe's Null Bot
It would appear that for some reason Joe's Null Bot stopped working as originally noted here at the end of January. This is turning out to be permanent and not just a glitch and the bot owner Joe Decker is not active to address. So we really need another bot to take up the job or at least someone to check if there is a new bug breaking Joe's Null Bot. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 17:56, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe User:ProcBot has a null bot task. I might be mistaken though so I'll ping . Primefac (talk) 17:59, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping Primefac.
 * this is ProcBot tasks 5 and 6. The bot is already purging declined and rejected (see User:ProcBot/PurgeList2); I've just added Category:Pending AfC submissions to the list. However, there's an issue with ProcBot's category purging due to sheer size of large categories combined with the way I coded the bot, so the bot sometimes has difficulties processing the category. My original code approach was designed for pages and irregular purges of template transclusions, rather than regular category purges, so it's not 100% stable on categories. Short version (as folks probably won't find the technical details interesting): I need to get around to fixing that properly. Will try to get around to it soon. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:14, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks even a semi-stable run will help and will save me running manual occasional null edits runs as I have done the last month hoping it was a glitch. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 18:30, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi it does not appear to be working - not sure if it's the issue you said the bot had or if there is actually an underlying bug which is actually caused Joe's Null Bot to fail. For instance the first article in Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days ago currently Draft:Quincy Crew when looked at is 12 days old. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 12:17, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Draft:Quincy Crew not any more because someone went and edited it - I wont post the next example as it would probably just happen again - just look at the first article sin the 0 day list. KylieTastic (talk) 12:28, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry! That was me, accidentally making a non-null edit (swiftly reverted) while investigating what could be going on here. Fish-slapping welcomed... ƒirefly  ( t · c ) 12:32, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Firefly you also found the other existing issue that for some interfaces a standard null edit will always remove any trailing LFLF - but other edit interfaces (mobile?) can leave them. So a standard just edit/save does not work without causing a two byte edit. KylieTastic (talk) 12:37, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I think this is a bug so I have reported as such T277373 KylieTastic (talk) 13:42, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I've found that pywikibot using the  function seems to work.  ƒirefly  ( t · c ) 18:52, 13 March 2021 (UTC)


 * After feed back on T277373 that the forcelinkupdate only works on api.php not index.php I have tested and it works fine. So closing the bug report, it's a bot issue. I just noticed User:ProcBot/PurgeList2 is set to only run every 6 days so maybe that's the issue with the new bot appearing not to work it just is slow between runs. KylieTastic (talk) 22:59, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It works via api.php yes (although, the recursive link update is broken, I've just been too lazy to file a phab task about it).
 * Let me expand on when I say the task is a bit flimsy. So it's set to run every 6 days (which is the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th and 30th of every month). However, the code for this task in relation to recurring categories is dodgy in the sense that it begins the task, but it only gets some of the way through before dying. Sometimes it will get through 75% of the pages, other times it will get through 20 pages before dying. The reason is the way the scheduler works: ProcBot runs via cron, the task for this runs via cron every 15 minutes and then tries to fetch the list of pending jobs and run whichever are due. It terminates after ~15 minutes and starts a new process, but allows queued jobs to finish first. Issue is that sometimes it doesn't let the queued jobs finish, or only lets some of them finish, and I don't really know why atm. I'll take a closer look at some point. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Bug in AFC Comment template?
I tried to use the # to enumerate my comments. See Draft:Liara Roux. The # is not interpreted, and is reproduced as a #. Now it;s not a big deal, bit it's interesting. Fiddle  Faddle  23:05, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * This is because the template replaces any newlines with paragraphbreak (probably to avoid the weirdness that comes with having newlines within list items, which all AfC comments are). I believe this replacement happens before MediaWiki starts to "look" for stuff like lists. You can get around this by manually entering it as, or more concisely with . Perryprog (talk) 02:04, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * @Perryprog I had a feeling it might be something like that. Since it is a cosmetic thing and rarely used I doubt there is anything that is pressing here, unless we have someone with a glorious and pedantic persistence to make it easier for folk like me. I just wanted to log it here to give that person a chance to have a crack at it Fiddle   Faddle  08:26, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

WP:AFCP
Hello. This project page has full protection, so I'm unable to edit it. All of the other user rights pages listed at Requests for permissions have the nav box located at the bottom of their pages. I would like to request an admin to place the same navbox at the bottom of WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants as well since it is also listed at Requests for permissions, and I think consistency, as well as navigation are important. I understand this talk page seems to be used mostly for requesting rights, but there doesn't seem to be a section presented for other requests, so I figured this was the only request option available. Thank you for your help. Huggums537 (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * My inclination is to say no, because the template does not include this project, nor do we really fit into any "permission" category - we are technically a WikiProject. (also, for those wondering, this is in regard to the participants list) Primefac (talk) 19:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

We have another editor required to pass all new articles through AFC
The editor is Please see this diff for the ANI discussion.

I find these outcomes to be somewhat vexing since we are grossly overloaded anyway so I believe we ought to give serious consideration to this alternative proposal. ANI consensus that AFC should become a dunmping ground for problem editors seems to be growing. We could argue that trash articles make good practuce for new reviewers, but the backlog is growing all the time anyway, and it is disheartening to watch it grow so fast. Fiddle  Faddle  10:42, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Oh joy! Yup dumping ground and cesspit of Wikipeida where we get the joy of wading through the endless effluent. KylieTastic (talk) 13:50, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , That is the ordure of the day Fiddle   Faddle  16:32, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that we should remember to Reject rather than Decline any submissions from this editor that seem unlikely to be approved, both because that is what Rejection is for, and because Rejected drafts can be the record to sustain a request for a competence block. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:52, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Editors who are required to use AFC
What other editors besides and  are required to use AFC? FloridaArmy seems to be a different case than TableSalt342. Most of FloridaArmy's stubs are good, but many of them are junk, and there have been personal attacks. I think that some restriction was imposed on FloridaArmy as to the total number of drafts that they could have waiting for review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert McClenon (talk • contribs) 16:52, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe those are the only two. Primefac (talk) 16:55, 27 March 2021 (UTC) Wrong! Primefac (talk) 17:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * And TableSalt is digging a hole now. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Per WP:RESTRICTIONS, are others and do currently use -  and  were others but they are now blocked. Also  is on a 20 active submissions limit but just ignores (currently 116 KylieTastic (talk) 17:19, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I thought it was 20 submitted drafts (it looks like a fair number of those in the search link are declined). Primefac (talk) 17:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It is 20 submitted drafts - but the search does check incategory:"Pending AfC submissions" and the first page (20) I checked were all submitted. If they are declined the current submission is at the bottom so you have to scroll down on each one. KylieTastic (talk) 17:35, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I could set up a tracking category to see specifically which drafts are his and submitted, if that would make things easier to keep track of. If he goes over 20, we just procedurally decline and/or put on hold until the number is <20. Primefac (talk) 17:36, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I didn't understand the purpose of the limit on submitted drafts by FloridaArmy anyway, because we can always ignore drafts. (It just makes us feel uneasy and guilty when we have too many backlogged drafts.)  But the community decided, for some reason.  Robert McClenon (talk) 18:25, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The purpose of the limit was to attempt to encourage them to submit better drafts rather than 100+ bad ones. They do improve drafts once submitted so they know how, they just choose not to and submit absolute minimum effort often with errors. They still just resubmit drafts with no changes that have been rejected multiple times.
 * I just wrote a program to check all the drafts 'properly' rather than my simple search that could have the odd miss-detect. Results for submits per user with 10 or more submissions
 * FloridaArmy - 116 Submissions
 * 216.174.67.51 - 33 Submissions
 * Liverpoolpics - 20 Submissions
 * Quaenuncabibis - 18 Submissions
 * 216.174.68.87 - 13 Submissions
 * Kvng - 12 Submissions
 * 216.174.66.228 - 12 Submissions
 * 216.174.73.130 - 12 Submissions
 * MWD115 - 11 Submissions
 * 216.174.72.243 - 11 Submissions
 * I would say clearly FloridaArmy is taking the piss, although Liverpoolpics is also a prolific submitter of junk, and 216.174.x.x looks like an unblocked proxy/vpn as so many are Serbian translations but the IPs are Ontario and the style of submissions are similar (on a few random checks) KylieTastic (talk) 21:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, so Kvng is saving drafts from G13, MWD115 is making biography stubs for European right-wing populist politicians. I have come across the Serbian article IPs. Definitely feels a little like a nationalist edit-a-thon, but several of the article are enough to pass. Bkissin (talk) 01:17, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Quaenuncabibis is the paid editor for EPFL (University in Lausanne, Switzerland) Bkissin (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

User:TheGs2007
is randomly adding "#REDIRECT"s to WP:AFC/R.  S/he seems to require hand-in-hand tutoring, as asking them to follow the instructions on the page results in a "I do not know what you are saying" response.

-- 67.70.27.246 (talk) 10:19, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I've left a follow-up to your comment on their talk. Hopefully some good comes out of it. Thanks for the note. Primefac (talk) 10:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Post-finasteride syndrome
Post-finasteride syndrome was deleted after a deletion discussion in 2015, and the deletion discussion was largely about the lack of accepted medical evidence that there is a medical syndrome. It was then re-created by sockpuppets, and deleted, and then redirected to Finasteride, and the redirect was fully protected due to edit-warring by the sockpuppets. A draft was submitted about a week ago. I first tried to tag the redirect as R with possibilities, and that didn't work because the redirect was protected. I requested that the protecting administrator downgrade the redirect to ECP, and they unprotected it, which was fine. I then reviewed the draft, and it says that there is medical controversy about whether there is a defined syndrome. That seemed like enough information to accept the draft. I accepted the draft (which was tedious for various reasons including multiple versions of capitalization of the title).

There is now a merge discussion in progress to merge it back into Finasteride.

On thinking about it, I think that I made the right decision in accepting the draft and letting the community decide. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:52, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Suggested AFCH script improvement for reviewers
It would be helpful if there was a version of the Pending AfC submission page that displayed an excerpt for each article, say the first sentence of the draft. When it comes to biographies in particular, the number is overwhelming, and having an excerpt would help reviewers get more information about the subject while skimming the list. Greenman (talk) 18:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)


 * , Navigation popups is very useful for this, as well as all the other things it can do. It can be enabled in your Preferences under Gadgets. StarryGrandma (talk) 04:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I do use this, but the lag means having a version with the excerpt on the page would still be much quicker. Greenman (talk) 13:23, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * @Greenman You mean somethine like User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting/Culture/Biography but for AFC drafts rather than NPP pages? – SD0001  (talk) 09:48, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Correct, just like that! Greenman (talk) 13:23, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

AFC joke categories?
So, Category:AfC pending submissions by age/1 day's time and Category:AfC pending submissions by age/2 days' time were created during April 1st activity but I'm not sure where they will serve a purpose for AFC. You are already utilizing Category:AfC pending submissions by age/1 day ago and Category:AfC pending submissions by age/2 days ago so these might just be some unfunny nonsense. If they are, please tag for deletion. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 20:04, 1 April 2021 (UTC)


 * @Liz Not being good today at one G13 (you noticed that the Editor is editing exactly each 6 months on this draft more or less non-constructive?!) but I for sure nominated those CATs CommanderWaterford (talk) 20:12, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, CommanderWaterford. I guess it was obvious by the page creator's username but I thought I'd check. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 20:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

HELP!!!!?!!?!!?!!!
Im trying to create an extremely important article on a clearly NOTABLE topic. Why havn't u all approved it yet??!? This process is RIGGED!!! Please approve Draft:Dupont Circle CVS escalator at once! Sdkb (talk) 00:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Query on potentially copyrighted images in Draft:Thrifty-Link Hardware
I'm not a draft reviewer but have come across a number of images used in Draft:Thrifty-Link Hardware on Commons. These were all uploaded by the draft creator & submitter and a number of them were nominated by myself as copyright violations (and deleted and removed from article, see history) and the remaining in the draft may very well be, too. Apart from the editors history of uploading copyrighted images, claiming to be their own work, the fact that they claim to own and have taken File:Moonta SA.jpg, File:BLH Thrifty-Link Hardware & Supermarket, Beaconsfield, Tasmania.jpg and File:Farmways Kellerberrin, Kellerberrin, Western Australia.jpg all on New Years Day in 2017 in rural locations in three different states of Australia just makes me think they are copyright violations, too. What should be done with a draft full of likely copyright violations? Calistemon (talk) 12:20, 31 March 2021 (UTC)


 * @Calistemon There seems to be no hard and fast rule. I follow suspect pictures to Commons and nominate them for whichever mechanism seems appropriate. The draft itself stands or falls on its own merits by virtue of the notability and referencing Fiddle   Faddle  19:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Timtrent. Myself and another users have delt with the copyright violations on Commons as far as possible. I was wondering whether the draft creator and uploaders complete disregard for our copyright rule, despite multiple warnings, has any implications on the draft itself. You have answered that question quite sufficiently. Calistemon (talk) 23:26, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Question about AfC template placement
When a draft has been declined and then resubmitted, the red "Submission declined" template stays at the top of the draft, while the yellow "Review waiting" template is placed at the bottom of the draft. Could the process be changed so the yellow "Review waiting" template is posted at the top, to make it more obvious to potential reviewers that they can review it? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * It is also inconsistent with itself - as if you use "Clean submission" the submision is moved to the top. I have also had several editors ask how to submit again when they already had because they didnt look at the bottom. KylieTastic (talk) 22:00, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe the template is placed at the bottom because that was the easiest way to code the "Submit" button. It uses the same mechanism as adding a new section on a talk page. It may not be possible to add it at the top, but I'll let someone with more tech experience chime in. – Novem Linguae (talk) 22:45, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * If it's not possible to change the code, would there be support for a bot to move the template (e.g. ) GoingBatty (talk) 01:47, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Even if the placement of the template doesn't make a difference to reviewers, moving the template to the top makes the "Review waiting, please be patient" message more prominent to the editors who wonder why their draft hasn't been reviewed yet. GoingBatty (talk) 05:13, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting. As designed in 2012, there was a task for ArticlesForCreationBot to move the templates, which were inserted at the bottom "for technical reasons", to the top. But that particular bot last did this sort of thing in Aug 2013? Reading through the maintainer's talk page archive, I get the impression they kind of lost interest when it became too hard to keep up with MediaWiki software changes that were breaking the bot.  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 06:08, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see that bot task listed at User:ArticlesForCreationBot Which bot task was it?  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 13:01, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , I don't see it in the listed tasks either. When I said "designed", I was referring to the note at the bottom of the template that places the notice at the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:AfC_submission/Substdraft&action=edit  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 19:10, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki:AFC-submit-wizard.js which we discussed earlier solves this issue by placing the template at the top where it belongs. There's nothing blocking the script from being deployed save for a very minor issue which I'm too busy to look into atm – that if a short description is present that's added automatically by an infobox/other template, the wizard would add a redundant short description tag with the same text. If anyone can file a patch for this issue, we should be good to go with it. – SD0001  (talk) 12:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Betsy Z. Cohen - Looking for a speedy close, please
I would close this myself, but I am the editor who sent it to AfD and do not think I am allowed to, even as WP:IAR

The draft was accepted in what I view as an unready state, and I sent it to AfD rather than draftifying it. It happens that the major contributor has a declared COI so cannot rescue it in main space. The fair thing to do is to draftily. But this means the AfD needs to be closed. I believe this can be a non admin closure, but obviously only if you agree with my thinking.

There are no guarantees that the finished product will be acceptable as an article, but my discussions (my talk page, mainly) with the creating editor read me to believe that they need this fair chance to try to make this article succeed. Fiddle  Faddle  06:10, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ closed and draftified. My thanks. (late signature, failed to sign) Fiddle   Faddle  08:55, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , just as an FYI, you can close your own AFD if you withdraw it, but only if no other users have done a "keep" !vote Best Wishes,  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:52, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * @Lee Vilenski I'm grateful. Thank you. I erred on the side of extreme caution as you see, and all is well that ended well. Now Draft:Betsy Z. Cohen stands a chance, though there is a load of hard work to be done inside it  Fiddle   Faddle  08:54, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Uploading has been disabled
With this update uploading has been disabled for free images. Is this now the policy of English Wikipedia that account-less people are no longer allowed to request uploads of free imagery? This change means that only non-free images can be requested to be uploaded, but free images can no longer be requested to be uploaded by such users. The article wizard options no longer indicate an option for uploading of free images without an account. While you can still choose to upload a non-free image with the interface.

Files for upload/Template presents 4 options, if the image is free, there are two choices, which leads to asking you to upload at Commons, or create an account at Commons. The two non-free options still go to the second step, where the removed link once also lead to. The choices at the second step remain the same as before, allowing users to request to upload a free image, but which is no longer correct, since none of the free image options on the first step lead to such a result.

Also, asking people to upload all free images onto Commons is not correct as there are several classes of images which are "free" in the jurisdiction of the United States, which cannot be uploaded onto Commons, and will be deleted on Commons, when uploaded, because they are not free in other non-US jurisdictions.

-- 67.70.27.246 (talk) 22:22, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Ping, who might know more about this. – Novem Linguae (talk) 02:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe that I originally created the wizard in order to help make an easy and intuitive interface and design for new users to be able to navigate through easily. I believe I used the links and flow from the old template that existed beforehand. If there's something wrong with the flow, let me know where the buttons should take you and I'll be happy to update it.  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   02:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)


 * The current wizard (after the February 2021 update) no longer has a path for account-less users to ask for an upload of a "free" image without registering for an account (either on en.wiki or at commons). So, that needs to be fixed, probably with an additional button for account-less users to ask to upload a file, to proceed to the SEARCH step Files for upload/Wizard/Search.
 * The current two buttons for uploading "Free" files both lead to having users (with accounts or asking them to create an account) to ask them to upload at Commons. This step is problematic due to the state of copyright law, and how Commons handles what it considers free enough to host. Commons needs files uploaded to be free in the jurisdiction in which it was created, and free in the United States. If it fails either of these criteria, it ends up up for deletion (why several PD-veryold or PD-US-simple images are not eligible for Commons, because of something the originating country considers non-free, such as a non-expiring Crown Copyright) So the text of the instructions should indicate that "free" must be considered free in the United States and in the source country. If it only free in the United States, another button needs to access Files for upload/Wizard/Search for free in the US-only, and would need to indicate a Do not move to Commons because it is only free in the US and not worldwide. en.wiki is hosted in the U.S. and follows U.S. copyright law, so that is why such images are hosted and appear on en.wiki;
 * -- 67.70.27.246 (talk) 04:32, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Accepting Draft When There Is Redirect with History
We recently discussed the situation where an article previously existed, and was then cut down to a redirect, but then a draft is written and approved. The conclusion is that the old redirect with history should be moved to draft space, and then pointed to the article. This requires a round-robin move. The most recent example to look at is Embers (James Newman song). But here is the issue. Accepting the draft from draft space always leaves a redirect behind. I can't turn off the redirect. I have to move the redirect to somewhere else, with that redirect suppressed, in order to free up the slot in draft space, in order to move the old redirect thing to draft space. Is there a way that I can turn off redirect creation on an AFC Accept?

I know that I can do a regular Move with redirect creation off to move the draft into article space. But this also turns off a lot of cleanup that is done by the script, and then the cleanup has to be done manually in article space. If I move the article into article space, is there a way that I can get the script to do cleanup after the move?

Do you understand the question well enough to at least try to answer it? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:29, 8 April 2021 (UTC)


 * You can use  by moving the redirect moved from the article namespace into the redirect created by publishing the draft.  This should replace the latter redirect with the former redirect. ~  Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 05:17, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * @Aseleste Would you be really kind and treat me as if I am very dense and spoon feed me that answer, please? Fiddle   Faddle  17:32, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Aseleste - I don't understand either. You appear to be saying that there is a way to move the redirect with history in place of the useless redirect.  How do I issue this magic command?  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:44, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the below message is clear enough. ~ Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 02:39, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * @Aseleste That seems only to apply for those with Page Mover rights. Is there a route for mere mortals? Fiddle   Faddle  06:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. ~ Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 09:20, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * If a round-robin is needed, then WP:RM/TR is the place to ask for it. The other option is to ignore the history and db-move the page. Primefac (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Robert, use User:Andy M. Wang/pageswap to do your page swaps, since you are a page mover. It will suppress all redirects, meaning that Foo will end up (eventually) at Draft:Foo and Draft:Foo will end up properly at Foo.
 * Of course, if you're wanting to use AFCH to accept the draft, then you need to move Foo to some temporary holding cell, but as Aseleste says, there is a recently-approved tool for page movers that will automatically delete a redirect if it's the only edit. So the sequence goes:
 * Move Foo to some other location (maybe your userspace as I've seen you do in the past) with redir suppressed. Let's call it User:Foo/Foo.
 * Accept Draft:Foo using AFCH
 * Move User:Foo/Foo to Draft:Foo (suppressing creation of a redirect) and then fix the redirect to point at Foo.
 * In other words, there shouldn't be any magic command (except maybe a box that says "there's a redirect here, do you really want to delete?") but I think based on what I've read about the perm it should just move it without issue. Primefac (talk) 01:08, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

A possible script/template enhancement
Please start by looking at Draft:Uday Phadke. I'm not asking you to review it, though you are welcome to.

At the head of the text is a comment from the submitting editor. We get these sometimes. Perhaps we should get these more often, the more so if we are trying to educate as well as filter out dross.

What if there were a button for the submitter to reply to a comment, and to keep it sorted into order with the comments already places? Fiddle  Faddle  17:30, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Timtrent - I can't review it, because it hasn't been submitted. But it is written non-neutrally, to praise the subject rather than describing them neutrally.  What are you saying about the comment?  The submitter is, in good faith but incorrectly, inserting a comment in the body of the article that belongs in either an AFC comment or on the draft talk page.  You knew that.  I don't think that a button will help, because I think that this is a submitter who doesn't yet know how to use the Comment button.  Have I missed something?  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * @Robert McClenon You missed nothing. It is the good faith comment that I would like to handle in some better manner  Fiddle   Faddle  21:15, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Moving a Comment
Okay, User:Timtrent. I see what you are asking for. You are asking for a tool for the reviewer that will move the comment in the space that is meant to be the article body to either AFC comments or the draft talk page. I think that the reviewer would first have to select the text. The tool could then either put an AFC comment wrapper around the text, or move the text to the draft talk page. Is that what you want? Yes, it happens often enough that a tool would be good, that the submitter puts a comment to the reviewer in where the article text should be. I occasionally move the comment to the draft talk page, but that is work. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:57, 8 April 2021 (UTC)


 * @Robert McClenon I hadn't thought that the reviewer might do it, but what a good idea. It could either be the reviewer or a means be set up for the non reviewer who wishes to respond, or both  Fiddle   Faddle  06:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Timtrent - We are discussing mistakes made by users who don't know how to use an existing tool, and so they inserted a comment in the article body rather than using an AFC comments. It seems backward to develop another more advanced tool to allow users to clean up a mistake that they made because they didn't know how to use a standard tool.  I think that they might, in good faith, make the mess worse.
 * Administrators are said to have the mop, in Wikipedia. We allow administrators, and other trusted or more-nearly-trusted users, to mop up spills.  It is better to keep mop-like tools in the hands of janitors than to give them to the users who have done the spilling.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Asking for articles to be created.
I typed in a title that has no article, according to Wikipedia. There was a message that I could request it by going to the link to the article for which this page is the talk page. But the article is about creating articles, not asking for articles to be created. Why is the link to the article request page hidden here on the talk page?67.209.131.46 (talk) 16:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)


 * It is present here, but not hidden. It is here in case people arrive here while looking for it. I'm not alt all sure, having joined here ages ago, how a new editor woudl fid it, though.
 * Requesting an article is different from creating one.  Fiddle   Faddle  16:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * If you type request an article in the search box you do end up at the right place. I just tried it  Fiddle   Faddle  16:37, 9 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I guess it depends on one's idea of what hidden means. Maybe I should have written 'buried.'  A talk page, which is about improving the main page is not my idea of an obvious, clear, open, or useful place to put a link to requesting an article, when someone has already clicked on a link that presumably brings her or him to the place to request an article.  Yes, I know the difference between requesting and creating -- that was my point:  I cam to a place that was billed as being where articles can be requested but only saw a guide to creating articles.  If one wants to request an article about, e.g., JUWEL, how likely is one to think of typing 'request an article,' given that one has come to the page for requesting an article.  You thought of doing so, but I wonder how many people not used to working on Wikipedia would.  37.99.83.63 (talk) 03:12, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * As far as I've ever been able to tell, requesting an article at Requested articles is like shouting into the wind. Those pages are not frequently updated, and most editors just create the next thing that comes to mind instead of scouring those pages. I think most have forgotten it is there, but I dont frequent that space, so I could be totally wrong. -2pou (talk) 03:49, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * User:2pou - I think that shouting into the wind is a little more likely to result in another human hearing you. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:06, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Sadly we are all volunteers, so we generally create articles on things we are interested in. If there is a subject you want an article about, my suggestion would be to notify the corresponding wikiproject about it, there might just be someone interested in making it. I've found the requested articles page to be not particularly well viewed, so there's not all that many people there reading through requests. Even if there was someone willing to do the request, they might have a line of other articles to work through. Best Wishes,  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:12, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , I was active at WP:RA for awhile. This is my impression as well. I think that AFC is a better path for people that want an article. I talked about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Requested articles, but the WikiProject is inactive, so I didn't get many replies. – Novem Linguae (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

About AFC reviewers
Hello. What are the qualifications for becoming an AFC reviewer? Elyse's Son 09:08, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , hello friend. WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants should have the info you're looking for. In short, 90 days old, 500 edits, and some experience with notability and deletion. Oh, and to be honest, your talk page has a lot of draftification and deletion notices on it. That would probably be disqualifying. You should take care to only create articles that meet our notability guidelines. Hope that helps. – Novem Linguae (talk) 09:11, 12 April 2021 (UTC)