Draft talk:Christopher Hollins

Article about subject now exists

@David Tornheim: I understand what you did and perhaps even why you did it, but I'm not sure it was the best thing to do procedure wise in this case. Now, there's a draft currently awaiting AfC review for an article that already exists, which might just cause some unnecessary confusion. In hindsight, it might've just been better for you to clean up the draft and accept it per WP:AFCR since that would've preserved the H:PH. Perhaps Number 57, the last AfC reviewer to look at the draft, can suggest what to do now. The article that you created is now fair game for AfD, but this draft probably needs to be deleted (maybe via WP:MFD) since it's no longer needed. Maybe a WP:REDIRECT is a possibility, but that would be a cross-namespace redirect which I think is usually not recommended. Waiting six months for the draft to be deleted per WP:G13 seems a waste and it's also possible that the creator will continue to try and improve the draft instead of the article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:13, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Marchjuly Thanks for the feedback. I feared I might have botched some complex steps I needed to follow. I'm not really all that familiar with AfC and WP:AFCR. I figured it would take me hours to figure it out, and I would probably do it wrong anyway, so I tried my best to do it a way that would get it done. Otherwise, I probably would not have bothered with trying to get the article up. Sorry if it is messy. Next time I will do what you said. Again thanks for the constructive criticism.

Also, when I started, I thought I would end up deleting most of it, and that the sources were probably pretty weak. That's the main reason I created a second draft. But it turns out the sources were much better than I expected. If I had known that, I would have been more likely to try to work with the original draft. I also felt a bit weird about messing with someone else's draft. I didn't really have time to read the entire thing, but I wanted something up, since the guy and his actions are sufficiently notable. I didn't want to get into the nitty gritty of reading every single source and comparing with every single sentence in the draft.

One of the problems with the AfC process IMHO is it is overly burdensome for reviewers, which means drafts sit in AfC forever when they don't need to. New editors mistakenly think they need a huge article and don't realize less is more, and that a handful of really good sources is all you need to get an article up. And because of that, they make it way more work for all of us, compared to getting a good foundation and then adding to it. Those minor edits of adding new material, I believe, are much easier for editors to catch problems and fix. --David Tornheim (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Marchjuly

David Tornheim This exchange and both of your work here were extremely informative. Thanks for the crash course and the better version.— Preceding unsigned comment added by BostickLaw (talk • contribs) 21:25, 9 October 2020(UTC)

@Robert McClenon: FYI. This is the discussion about why there is draft article and real article. Perhaps you can advise what I and others can do when a notable subject has a lengthy draft like this. In particular, the case where it would take hours to verify and fix every sentence to be WP:NPOV, and it is easier to just delete everything except the key material that has is easy to verify and is properly sourced. I spent hours on that article, reading and researching the subject.

Basically, I wanted the material that I had not had time to review to remain *somewhere* in draft and for the key material that can easily be published to be put up now, not months from now when it is less relevant. If I had simply deleted everything I had not reviewed, it would IMHO give the new editor who wrote it the wrong message that the material was unacceptable, since that material simply was still unreviewed.

IMHO, the AfC review process seems overly burdensome for everyone involved--particularly new editors. I've created numerous articles, and none went through AfC. I started with a core that establishes notability and built on the foundation. When another editor sent an article I had started to AfC, I just gave up on the article.

Seems to me editors are far better off doing everything they can to avoid getting their articles submerged and buried in AfC and subjected to delays they have no ability to control. Only the most persistent editors seem to be able to get their articles thru before giving up in exasperation. Maybe I misjudge AfC, but that's sure how it has always seemed to me, more like a junkyard and bureaucratic nightmare and gatekeeper that drive off new editors rather than a place where draft articles are quickly made ready for publication.

Maybe some who are more familiar with it can convince me otherwise. --David Tornheim (talk) 21:45, 9 October 2020 (UTC)