Wikiversity talk:Drafts

Ground Rules

Here are the ground rules for this preliminary discussion that I (User:Mu301) am moderating.

1. I will begin with a brief statement which explains the purpose.
2. I have included a list of questions with yes/no answers. I will add questions as needed per the statements of participants.
3. Have statements by individual contributors in their own words about the topic, under a header with their username, not to exceed 700 words. Threaded and long-form discussions should take place elsewhere. Statements may contain links to other discussions or longer statements on another page.

See also Wikiversity:Colloquium#Draft: namespace and wikidata:Wikidata:Administrators'_noticeboard#links_to_en-wv_draft:_namespace for context.

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.

I see a glaring need for our community to adopt a Wikiversity:Snowball clause. I opened this discussion knowing full well that the outcome was a forgone conclusion. This is a situation where a single contributor is arguing against a common sense interpretation of a term. The community obviously understood what the definition of "draft" was when approving the creation of the name space. The participation in this discussion so far clearly affirms that. I could leave this open for days, months, or even years... but the outcome would not change. I have engaged the community on this issue for no other reason than to make a point. That point should be well taken. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that this will result in the community deciding to support wikidata linking to draft pages. Let's now focus our energy on discussions that will have a productive outcome and stop wasting everyone's time. I'm also concerned that a single contributor has made a determined effort to misrepresent our local best practices at a sister project. I will now communicate our community concensus to wikidata and request that they refrain from linking to any page in en-wv draft space to correct this misrepresentation. --mikeu ^talk 13:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata links to en-wv Draft: namespace

Let's start with a simple question before we get into particulars.

Purpose

This is a discussion on the topic of Wikidata links to en-wv Draft: namespace pages.

Question

Do you support, oppose, abstain, or are you neutral about Wikidata including links to en-wv Draft: pages?

• Oppose --mikeu ^talk 17:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose -- Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 17:49, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:53, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose -- Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:39, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support I'll put some of the points raised in the Wikidata discussions below. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 13:33, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose The draft namespace stores a random draft page, it's always not the official page of a concept, so linking them with Wikidata is too much weired. --Liuxinyu970226 (discuss • contribs) 14:32, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 00:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Statements

User:Mu301

• Draft namespace was intended for resources that for a variety of reasons might not be suitable for the main resource namespace. It should be considered inappropriate to link to them, just as other sister projects do not allow links to drafts. There is no point in maintaining a draft namespace if there is no distinction between a resource and a draft. --mikeu ^talk 17:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

User:Marshallsumter

• Whatever the status of an article, when there is only one article (draft or otherwise) it is ok to link it to Wikidata. This would make linking to information not in a Wikipedia but in Wikidata possible. As long as there is ONE article by a name, it should be linked. Include draft article links into existing items. To make a good draft, they might need information from Wikidata available. In that case, shouldn't they create an item as soon as possible and add information here? I see no problem having a Q item here, while the article is being developed in en.wikipedia or whatsoever. These are points raised at previous wikidata discussions. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 14:14, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
• Wikiversity drafts are actively searched by Google! But, Wikipedia drafts are not. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

So, you are basically admitting that you are using Wikiversity draft space as a w:Google bomb.[1][2] --mikeu ^talk 01:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

No, occasionally Wikiversity drafts turn up in Google searches but Wikipedia drafts do not. Try it yourself! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:47, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Here's an example from Draft:Index: "History of Denmark" draft, without the word "draft" you may get About 13,800,000 results (0.65 seconds), with the word draft you may get About 1,890,000 results (0.43 seconds), including Wikiversity Draft:History of Denmark. These searches are on the entire web. Now go to Wikipedia and search using "Draft:". Draft:Survival comes up. Search Draft:Survival on Google and you may get About 4,890 results (0.35 seconds) but no Wikipedia article w:Draft:Survival comes up. It has nothing to do with me! Please be more careful! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• I would also ask that those who are opposing inclusion of our Drafts in Wikidata to please reconsider your opinion. IF there is here a genuine desire to have additional contributors improve our drafts, what better way is there than having them searched by Google, a leading search engine. Also, Wikidata considers itself to be a search engine; therefore, our drafts belong there! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

User:Tsirel

• I wonder, whether Wikidata is enthusiastic to ultimately link the whole Internet (like Google), or not? How greedy should be its algorithm? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 14:39, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

User:Guy vandegrift

• Is there a plan to include Wikipedia drafts in Wikidata? --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:35, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Attempting to add a link to an en-wp draft page results in this error message. Linking to en-wv draft pages does not result in an error. --mikeu ^talk 17:52, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

“ Could not save due to an error.

• The save has failed.
• Warning: Per Wikidata notability policy adding links to article drafts is not allowed. Therefore this edit cannot be completed. If you think you are correct, contact an administrator.

”

• How certain are we that Google does not index WV draftspace? I just Googled "Orbital alignment in spiral galaxies" without quotation marks, and the draft ranked #1. Perhaps Google knows my URL often goes to this draft space. THIS is my link. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 12:21, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • The default setting is apparently to allow indexing. We can ask to have that changed. The values are documented at mw:Manual:$wgDefaultRobotPolicy. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:43, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

User:SelfieCity

• I oppose because a draft is, simply, a draft. While we may have some that are well-developed, it would be hard to always guarantee that they are. We want to make sure that we don't have links to content that's not decent. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 00:59, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.

We are again faced with an issue where a single contributor disagrees with common sense and consensus. There's not a chance that this will gain community support. Closing with prejudice. We're not going to waste any more time debating the obvious. --mikeu ^talk 20:21, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata links to en-wv Resource: (main) namespace

This section is for discussion of cross-wiki links from sister projects to en-wv resources in our main namespace. (The scope of this review has been expanded due to comments from the community above. I'm not going to rename the page at this time as the subject matter is interrelated.)

Purpose

Wikiversity has adopted best practices which allow for the creation of multiple resources on the same topic in our primary namespace (ie Resource in the local interface.) For example, we might have a set of learning materials that include "Introduction to astronomy" (intended for teenage learners), "Basic astronomy" (intended for college students), "Starting astronomy" (for amateur / citizen science learners), etc. Wikidata is designed to cross-link similar resources on multiple wikimedia projects to identify related materials. It is important for our community to understand this and create cross-links which reflect a broad overview of the topic. It would be inappropriate to link an en-wp article on general astronomy to a graduate level university resource here, for example. Any similarity of title wording is irrelevant - we should assess links based on the substance of the content. To summarize: our project does not use the same type of flat namespace as an encyclopedia or dictionary and can not be easily cross-linked without the community reviewing the appropriateness of the links.

Question

When there is only one resource at en-wv should a link be created in Wikidata to a similarly named page cross-wiki?

• Oppose --mikeu ^talk 18:52, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:08, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:03, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as stated. If the link would be to Draft or Portal, for example, no. Instead, we should be creating a similarly named main space landing page with links to learning resources appropriate for that subject. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Statements

Mu301

Our extensive use of subpages and explicit encouragement of multiple resources on the same topic creates a problematic situation at our sister project wikidata. Links there should be cautiously applied to well developed "landing pages" here that summarize the topic and describe / list the materials available on our site. --mikeu ^talk 18:52, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Marshallsumter

• So far each of our multiple resources on the same topic, or closely related, can be handled on Wikidata. To use two examples, our Draft:History uses geochronology to study historical events and is or was at d:history (Q309) on Wikidata; whereas, Portal:History is at d:Portal:History (Q175361) on Wikidata. As the draft is geochronology-based some may believe that a humanities subject like history should be written by historians rather than geochronologists or archaeologists using radiocarbon dating. Another Wikidata item with a newer Q number could then be used for geochronological history. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
• I have looked at some recently created landing pages at Keynote lectures and found apparently for science learners that they are not using the landing pages as expected but instead prefer portals and subject templates. The hits on the landing pages for the month examined are apparently trickling down from the templates, drafts and portals. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:49, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Dave Braunschweig

Links to Draft: and Portal: are inappropriate for any Wikidata links, unless, perhaps there are corresponding links for the Wikipedia Wikiproject namespace. Draft: and Portal: are not in the default search index here, and should not be referenced elsewhere. Instead, we should have proper landing pages that provide links to appropriate resources. A History page should have links to related history courses, lessons, categories, and portals. Wikidata only allows one link per page. That link should be a main space page with a title recognized and recognizable by others (Wikipedia, etc.). -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:03, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig: Umm, Portal namespace pages are allowed (for main pages only, not allowed for subpages of those), as they have item for "Wikimedia portal". --Liuxinyu970226 (discuss • contribs) 04:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Guy vandegrift

Let's learn how to use draftspace before we even begin to think about Wikidata. For example, I propose that we reformat draftspace names in order to encourage editors to work in drafspace. See for example, Draft:How to create a Wikiversity article--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Improving the appearance of draftspace articles

Purpose

I made two templates for use on Draft:How to create a Wikiversity article and its subpage. The templates do not remove the word "Draft" from the title, but merely minimize it to zero size: If you select/copy/paste the title, you will discover that "Draft:" is included in the title. I hesitated to do this on my prior draftspace contributions because it looks like a way to mislead the reader into thinking they were reading in mainspace. But note how the tab next to a draftspace article reads "Draft" (instead of "Resource"). This will inform the astute reader that they are reading a draft. And, the template preserves the full pagename via the breadcrumbs in all subpages.

I propose that we permit this trick because high-value resources should be welcome to remain indefinitely in draft space. High-value resources in draftspace would include collections of student essays, as well as all stubs: Anybody wishing to begin a new article should create the mainspace page and a link the draft into that page. This policy also encourages the use of subpages in resources, since subpage titles can become unwieldy if the fullpagename involves subpages of subpages.

Question

Users may hide the title's "Draft:" prefix, provided the top of the page contains a statement or tag identifying the resource as either DRAFT or RESEARCH. Pages that seem to mislead the reader will be subject to community review. To avoid confusion and to inform readers of the nature of draftspace, all redirects to draftspace must be soft (not automatic) and contain a brief statement describing draftspace.

Last sentence was added before voting commenced.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 12:33, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:49, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Statements

Guy vandegrift

I deliberately failed to address a number of questions because they should be addressed only after we resolve a number of issues, including the question of requiring all templates to be subpages of Template:Draftspace, as well as more details concerning how draftspace pages may be formatted. The most difficult unresolved issue involves this community's lengthy and time-consuming process for deciding which resources belong in draftspace. Permitting users to reformat titles will help establish Wikiversity draftspace as a friendly environment for resources that do not belong in mainspace. A more user-friendly draftspace makes it easier to streamline the process by which decisions are made regarding placement of resources in draftspace.

• For those still in doubt about the need for "user-friendly" draftspace formatting, consider this scenario: Suppose a professor asks students to post their projects in Wikiversity draft space. Suppose a student wishes to mention their project on a resume. Since most resumes are delivered in electronic form, a great way for a student to list this work is via a permalink. See for example, my contribution at Special:Permalink/1995831--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• I recently improved the draft-space templates. Purge your page if you don't see the new Comic Sans font in the title:--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:02, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
  1. Draft:How to create a Wikiversity article
  2. Draft:How to create a Wikiversity article/Sample subpage

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.

The proposal and amount of time is unanimously agreed upon. --mikeu ^talk 20:30, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Draft namespace resource retention

This section is for discussion of retention of Draft namespace resources.

Purpose

The draft namespace contains resources that are not yet ready for main space listing. Over time, many of these resources will become abandoned. How long should abandoned draft resources be retained? Based on Wikiversity:Proposed deletion, the community has supported a 90-day deletion of low-quality resources. However, proposed deletion requires actively identifying the resource and then waiting 90 days for deletion. This proposal is to instead classify abandoned draft resources as those without activity for a given period of time. Resources not active after this time period are not likely to be improved and would benefit from a fresh start. Options could potentially include 30 days, 90 days, 120 days, 180 days, or 365 days. An abandoned template could be added by bot after some period of time, such as half the deletion policy time, indicating the date after which the resource would be deleted if no additional improvements are made.

Question

How long should abandoned draft resources be maintained? Voting in this case is either for a specific number of days, or Do Not Delete if you believe abandoned draft resources should not be deleted automatically after a given period of time.

• 180 days - Consistent with Wikipedia draft deletion policy. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:17, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• 180 days sounds reasonable for the reasons given by Dave. --mikeu ^talk 20:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• 180 days sounds reasonable. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 20:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• 180 days Support -- Bert Niehaus (discuss • contribs) 18:20, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• 180 days + 7 day grace period starting after notification on user talk page of active principal contributor or autoconfirmed user. Support --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:39, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Statements

Dave Braunschweig

Wikipedia has found 180 days to be an appropriate expiration time for abandoned draft resources. I see no reason to differ from their policy. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:21, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Historical Discussions

• 2018 January: The Draft: namespace was created in response to a Requests for Deletion discussion on Main Page "Lectures".
• 2018 August: Discussion was generated at Wikidata in response to concerns about Wikidata links to the Draft namespace.

policy and page change suggestion

"Resources which remain in the draft space for over 180 days (6 months) without being substantially edited may be deleted.".

I suggest that 180 sentence be changed to: "Resources shall remain in the draft space, even without being substantially edited, will be kept indefinitely. Draft pages can be organized renamed as needed."

A rational can be added if needed, which could be something to the effect of, "Not deleting Creating Commons Content created in good faith is fruitful to the Creative Commons as a whole, database storage is not reduced by deleting content, and there is generally no harm keeping good faith content in the "Draft:" namespace. Additionally, whether someone created good faith Creative Commons content (related to teaching, learning, or research) to hone their writing and wiki editing skills, simply to plant the seed of an idea for others to build off of later, or so forth, keeping such content in the "Draft:" namespace can give others an opportunity to develop the content later, use the content as food for thought that might spark new, useful, or novel ideas, and/or possibly another creative fruitful intellectual processes related to Creative Commons content creation not described here." (modified from here)

I also suggest that this, or something to the effect of this, be added to Wikiversity:Drafts, "Not deleting Creating Commons Content created in good faith is fruitful to the Creative Commons as a whole, database storage is not reduced by deleting content, and there is generally no harm keeping good faith content in the "Draft:" namespace. Additionally, whether someone created good faith Creative Commons content (related to teaching, learning, or research) to hone their writing and wiki editing skills, simply to plant the seed of an idea for others to build off of later, or so forth, keeping such content in the "Draft:" namespace can give others an opportunity to develop the content later, use the content as food for thought that might spark new, useful, or novel ideas, and/or possibly another creative fruitful intellectual processes related to Creative Commons content creation not described here."

Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 05:10, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I strongly support your suggestion. The limit should be ∞ months (and not one day less)..@Addemf and Michael Ten:Do I have my math right here?Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 05:28, 13 March 2024 (UTC)--see below why I struck out "strongly"

I as actually thinking ∞ years + ∞ months, but I do not object to your proposal either. I will respect diversity of thought on the matter. (being silly) Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

As (∞ months - 1 day) = ∞ months, then this is a proposal for both ∞ months and not ∞ months. :P Just being silly.

🌞🖖😸 Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 20:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I personally have no strong convictions about the issue. But I know, Guy vandegrift, you've written a lot of good content. Not all of it I'm qualified to assess, but it looks good to me and you seem like a dependable, regular contributor. So I trust your judgment and I'll support the policy if you think it's helpful. Addemf (discuss • contribs) 06:09, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Let me explain the precise nature of my "strong" support: Michael Ten spoke eloquently on the need to preserve all good-faith efforts; the question is how we do it. We have two options, both reasonably good. What I "strongly" support is that we implement one or both options (they are not mutually exclusive.) But I am unable to take any action on the roughly 100 "prods" and "speedy-deletes" currently up for deletion until we make a choice: Does good-faith effort "Foobar" belong in draftspace as Draft:Foobar? Or does it go into Draft:Archive as Draft:Archive/2024/Foobar? I lean towards Michael's proposal (Draft:Foobar) because it requires less time and effort.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I support the thing that makes life easy -- I don't anticipate `Draft:Foobar` causing serious problems. In the event that it ever does, I expect it shouldn't be hard to reverse the decision? I'm in favor. Addemf (discuss • contribs) 19:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I support "Please vote on whether to allow pages in draftspace to remain indefinitely" Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 07:03, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Initial weak support for allowing pages to remain in the Draft space indefinitely, with exceptions such as copyright violation. This option is worth considering and is simpler than a separate archive in the Draft space. If someone presents strong argument against, I may reconsider. As a formal aside, the discussion heading "policy and page change suggestion" leaves a lot to wish, to put it mildly. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 13:46, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I generally disagree. I think that if you have a resource that is usable, it should be in the main namespace, where it can be edited and improved by others and has maximum visibility. If you have something you are actively developing, but it isn't really in a usable state, it should be in the draft namespace to broadcast that it's not ready for primetime, but it's something you are working on and others can edit there too, but it may be a little premature. If you have some nascent idea that that you're not really advancing, leave it in the user namesapce where others are unlikely to bother it or even find it and you can leave plausibly half-baked educational resources indefinitely. A draft of something that no one is working on is just clutter that is neither fish nor fowl and having the deletion prospect should incentivize the correct behavior to push it to something usable in the main namespace. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

"I think that if you have a resource that is usable, it should be in the main namespace, where it can be edited and improved by others and has maximum visibility. If you have something you are actively developing, but it isn't really in a usable state, it should be in the draft namespace to broadcast that it's not ready for primetime [...]" I agree with this. i support this view. Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 00:07, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Purging draft-archived pages dewikifies incoming links, category statements, and templates. Unpurged versions are viewable via the history.

@Koavf: I have been getting a lot of deletion requests recently for low value pages with multiple authors. The requests are too numerous for me to adequately judge, and I can't move them to userspace because they have multiple authors. Also, I don't have time to figure out who was an author because lots of people have made minor edits, repared vandalism, ect. To make things happen faster, I created Draft:Archive/2024. Are you OK with that? It sure speeds things up for me? Given Draft-space and Draft:Archive-space, Draft-space is easier for me. But I can easily live with Draft/Archive-space (see flowchart.) That might be a good compromise:If Mr. Foobar creates a page it goes to his usersspace. If he picks up Mrs. Foobar as a coauthor, it goes to draft-archive space. Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 22:02, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I support the efficiency if that helps to have preserving Creative Commons contributions in the draft namespace easier, and more efficient. bless up. Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 00:12, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that userspace-ing should happen at the original author's name. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf: How do you feel about Draft:Archive when there are multiple authors?--See also my comment at Wikiversity:What-goes-where_2024#Proposal_to_allow_pages_to_remain_indefinitely_in_draftspaceGuy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 18 March 2024 (UTC)05:15, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I want to note that, between the different views of,

I want to note that if there are disagreements about whether or not content should remain in draft namespace or main namespace - perhaps something analogous to Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion could be utilized - like Wikiversity:Requests for keeping in main namespace and/or Wikiversity:Requests moving to draft namespace and/or Wikiversity:Requests to Draftify and/or Wikiversity:Requests to move to Main Namespace . This could be a way to gauge/measure/determine consensus perhaps. Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 00:16, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

consensus to change?

Is there consensus to change this now, "Resources which remain in the draft space for over 180 days (6 months) without being substantially edited may be deleted."

to

"Resources, that are good faith Creative Commons Contributions related to learning, teaching, education, or research, may remain in the draft space indefinitely, with or without being substantially edited.[1]" (or something like this, whatever wording/language is chosen)

• new [1] Wikiversity_talk:Drafts#policy_and_page_change_suggestion

Yes/OK? bless up. Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)