Marchjuly

Starting a draft

I'm not really sure how to open a draft space to write an article before I copy it to regular wiki. I have on occasion used my user page, but I usually delete afterwards. -- Dcw2003 (talk) 15:01, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Dcw2003: There are essentially two types of drafts and you can find out more information about each at Wikipedia:Drafts and Help:Userspace drafts. You can and probably should until you've got more experience at article creation also use Wikipedia:Articles for creation (AfC) when you want to create a new article. Users aren't required to use AfC for article creation, but it's recommended for newer users because it allow their work to be reviewed by others more familiar with Wikipedia's various policies and guidelines, particuarly Wikipedia:Notability. Once a new article is added to the mainspace, it's supposed to eventually be reviewed by the Wikipedia:New pages patrol, but anyone can, in principle, "assess" it to see whether they think it's in accordance with relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines. New articles that are believed to not be in accordance with these policies and guidelines often end up being nominated or otherwise tagged for Wikipedia:Deletion when it's believed they can't be fixed without pretty much a total re-write. Having a draft reviewed and subsequently approved by an AfC reviewer doesn't mean the page will never end up deleted, but it does increase the odds that it won't because AfC reviewers aren't supposed to approve drafts that clearly have no future. An AfC reviewer also knows how to properly Wikipedia:Move a draft to the mainspace and take care of all of the cleanup associated with doing so.

A few other things for reference. You should add your signature at the end of your talk page posts as explained in Wikipedia:Signatures. You should also try to avoid cut-and-paste page moving as much as possible because doing so can create attribution problems and instead "move" the page. Wikipedia's licensing policy requires that all edits be properly attributed, and cut-and-paste page moving can break the chain of attribution. There are exceptions to this (e.g. you shouldn't "move" your primary user page or user talk page to a new "name"), but it most cases drafts are "moved" to a new title when creating a new article. So, another advantage of using the draft namespace or a userspace draft instead of your primary user page to work on drafts is that it makes it much easier to "move" the draft to the mainspace and also preserve the page's history for attribution purposes. -- Marchjuly (talk) 20:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Starting a draft article in the user sandbox, dcw2003, question

I must be dense, and I'm sorry but I'm interested in starting an article without using the article wizard, but using a Special:MyPage/sandbox|user sandbox command. Is user the only variable to change to my username dcw2003, or is MyPage also a variable? I've written over 100 articles and don't want to use the Article Wizard, if thats ok. I'm afraid I still can't figure out what command to use to draft an article in my user sandbox. Can you be more specific? Thanks!!! Thanks again!!! Dcw2003 (talk) 21:16, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Dcw2003: I'm not sure I understand your question. If you want to create a userspace draft, the easiest way to do so is to go to the page Help:Userspace draft and follow the instructions given there. In the window "Create a userspace draft" enter the name of the draft you want to create where it says "Name of the article" and then click the gray "Create your new user space draft!" button. A new window/tab should open titled "User:Dcw2003/XXXX" in which "XXXX" is the name you chose for your draft. If you check, Special:Contributions/Dcw2003 after creating the page, you should find a record of you creating the page that contains a link to the new userpace draft. After that, you just edit the page much in the same way you'd edit any other Wikipedia page. There are further details on what to do after you've created a userspace draft found at Wikipedia:So you made a userspace draft, and I suggest you take a look at that page for reference.

Finally, please add your signature to the end of your talk page posts (not the beginning of your posts). There are several ways to do this: you can type four tildes ~~~~ at the very end of your post, or you can click your cursor where you want your signature to go and then click on the "Signature and timestamp" icon (it looks like an "x" and cursive "l") in the "Preview" task bar at the top of the editing window. Either way should work, but you can check by clicking on the "Show preview" button. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:45, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Dcw2003 (talk) 20:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)OK, thanks for all your input; I follow all your reasoning. I did all of the Henning article including the current photo being used, so I'll take your advice. (I was planning to follow your advice anyway, a while back)

Bunasawa

Hi, The Bunasawa draft [1] was significantly expanded upon today. The intention is clearly to reintroduce it to mainspace at some point. It seems to me that it could be speedy deleted now under WP:G4 (recreation of an article previously deleted at AfD). Axad12 (talk) 19:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)