Essays Low‑impact | ||||||||||
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Some of the content policies and other guidance intended for mainspace actually has been extended to all namespaces, including WP:OFFICE policies like WP:COPYVIO, and WP:BLP. Other principles like WP:NOTHERE, WP:CONSENSUS, and WP:POLEMIC have been used at MfD to not just userspace junk essays out of WP namespace, but outright delete them if they're egregious enough. That said, I'm one of most frequent "reminderizers" that WP:CCPOL ( WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V + WP:RS as V's supplement) does not apply to things like guidelines, talk page discussions, and policies themselves. No external sources can tell Wikipedia what orders to put page-bottom sections in, what it's criteria for speedy deletion must be, or what rules to have about inter-editor conflict resolution. Every extended discussion we engage in trying to figure out what an article should say based on the available sources so far is original research (quite literally – it is all four of WP:AEIS in most cases, but of the sources and their reliability, and of the encyclopedic relevance of particular facts, not of the truth of them, which is what the sources provide a model of for us).
However, CCPOL does apply to any template that may be used in mainspace. It also applies in limited but often page-fatal ways to userspaced drafts of wikiprojects, as another example. I guarantee you that if I create User:SMcCandlish/drafts/WikiProject Justice for the Armenian Genocide (or any of a zillion other WP:ADVOCACY / WP:TRUTH / WP:GREATWRONGS / WP:SOAPBOX / WP:BATTLEGROUND examples one could come up with) that this page will be deleted. Just search WP:MFD's archives for deleted bogus wikiprojects and you'll see that this is so. Same goes for deleted userspace rant "essays". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
When it comes to userspace drafts of articles, the two principal concerns I see being raised most often are:
These are all totally different issues, with different validity levels.
The first is an obvious "kill it with fire" problem. These pages should simply be deleted per the WP:TNT principle. It's less work to just write a proper article from scratch than to repair a blatant propaganda or attack piece.
The second is a serious but very temporary problem. It can be rectified by simply removing the offending material and leaving the rest alone.
The third is a semi-problem: The pages will probably remain abandoned, yet may contain work worth salvaging and making public; we probably need a better mechanism for doing this, including "auto-usurping" long-missing editors' drafts and moving them into whatever that process is.
The last one is not a problem at all. I would be apoplectic if anyone tried to delete several of my more developed userspace drafts. They are works in progress, albeit slow progress, and as I get access to different journal searches and stuff through WP:TWL I check them, maybe every year or three, for newly available material. They cause no harm, anyone may beat me to writing a public article on those topics, and anyone can even use what I've written so far to go live with an improved version (though it would be rude to do so without involving me if I'm still active, I would say). A few are also AfD-rescued stubs on things that may prove to be notable, or seemed like something likely to be notable after a few years, and it's utilitiarian to have a stub about them in my userspace as a reminder to check every year or so for new sources (or evidence of irrelevance after all).
As for more general feedback on the essay, it needs a lot of copyediting, as some sentences have redundancies, unclear wording, etc., and it uses a lot of WP jargon without linking to much of any of it, and some idiosyncratic terminology that doesn't match the usual lingo, like calling namespaces just "spaces".
It also has a too-dense look, but I'm the last person to help fix that, since I "write long" in such things. I think that if, after the intro, it had a bullet-list of key points, that would be a major aid to clarity, and make it more digestible. I need to rewrite some of my own essays that way, and slash a few others by 50% or more. It's always easier to see what to cut in someone else's writing that one's own. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Essays Low‑impact | ||||||||||
|
Some of the content policies and other guidance intended for mainspace actually has been extended to all namespaces, including WP:OFFICE policies like WP:COPYVIO, and WP:BLP. Other principles like WP:NOTHERE, WP:CONSENSUS, and WP:POLEMIC have been used at MfD to not just userspace junk essays out of WP namespace, but outright delete them if they're egregious enough. That said, I'm one of most frequent "reminderizers" that WP:CCPOL ( WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V + WP:RS as V's supplement) does not apply to things like guidelines, talk page discussions, and policies themselves. No external sources can tell Wikipedia what orders to put page-bottom sections in, what it's criteria for speedy deletion must be, or what rules to have about inter-editor conflict resolution. Every extended discussion we engage in trying to figure out what an article should say based on the available sources so far is original research (quite literally – it is all four of WP:AEIS in most cases, but of the sources and their reliability, and of the encyclopedic relevance of particular facts, not of the truth of them, which is what the sources provide a model of for us).
However, CCPOL does apply to any template that may be used in mainspace. It also applies in limited but often page-fatal ways to userspaced drafts of wikiprojects, as another example. I guarantee you that if I create User:SMcCandlish/drafts/WikiProject Justice for the Armenian Genocide (or any of a zillion other WP:ADVOCACY / WP:TRUTH / WP:GREATWRONGS / WP:SOAPBOX / WP:BATTLEGROUND examples one could come up with) that this page will be deleted. Just search WP:MFD's archives for deleted bogus wikiprojects and you'll see that this is so. Same goes for deleted userspace rant "essays". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
When it comes to userspace drafts of articles, the two principal concerns I see being raised most often are:
These are all totally different issues, with different validity levels.
The first is an obvious "kill it with fire" problem. These pages should simply be deleted per the WP:TNT principle. It's less work to just write a proper article from scratch than to repair a blatant propaganda or attack piece.
The second is a serious but very temporary problem. It can be rectified by simply removing the offending material and leaving the rest alone.
The third is a semi-problem: The pages will probably remain abandoned, yet may contain work worth salvaging and making public; we probably need a better mechanism for doing this, including "auto-usurping" long-missing editors' drafts and moving them into whatever that process is.
The last one is not a problem at all. I would be apoplectic if anyone tried to delete several of my more developed userspace drafts. They are works in progress, albeit slow progress, and as I get access to different journal searches and stuff through WP:TWL I check them, maybe every year or three, for newly available material. They cause no harm, anyone may beat me to writing a public article on those topics, and anyone can even use what I've written so far to go live with an improved version (though it would be rude to do so without involving me if I'm still active, I would say). A few are also AfD-rescued stubs on things that may prove to be notable, or seemed like something likely to be notable after a few years, and it's utilitiarian to have a stub about them in my userspace as a reminder to check every year or so for new sources (or evidence of irrelevance after all).
As for more general feedback on the essay, it needs a lot of copyediting, as some sentences have redundancies, unclear wording, etc., and it uses a lot of WP jargon without linking to much of any of it, and some idiosyncratic terminology that doesn't match the usual lingo, like calling namespaces just "spaces".
It also has a too-dense look, but I'm the last person to help fix that, since I "write long" in such things. I think that if, after the intro, it had a bullet-list of key points, that would be a major aid to clarity, and make it more digestible. I need to rewrite some of my own essays that way, and slash a few others by 50% or more. It's always easier to see what to cut in someone else's writing that one's own. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)