User:A2soup/Don't use draftspace

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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The Draft namespace is not a "free" drafting space. Though deletion procedures in the Draft namespace and mainspace differ, drafts often face deletion just as live articles do. Drafts in the Draft namespace are commonly deleted at Miscellany for Deletion (MfD) and speedy deleted per G13 for any number of reasons, including:

they have not been edited for 6 months (see WP:G13)
they do not demonstrate plausible notability
they duplicate a existing article, even if they are intended for drafting improvements to that article
they have been declined at Articles for Creation too many times
they appear to be "hopeless"

Since the Draft namespace is not a free drafting space, all editors—and especially newbies who do not understand how to avoid draft deletion—should use their userspace for "free" drafting instead. These userspace drafts should not be tagged with {{Userspace draft}}, nor should they be submitted to Articles for Creation, as this adds no benefit and makes it more likely that the draft will be targeted and listed at MfD or, in the latter case, deleted per G13 for the same reasons listed above. Completed drafts can be moved to the mainspace (turned into articles) without going through any of these channels provided that the mover's account is 4 days old and has made 10 edits. This 4 days and 10 edits requirement should be easily reached simply by developing the draft.

The use of the Draft namespace, Articles for Creation, and/or the {{Userspace draft}} template should be reserved for cases where community feedback on the draft is desired, with the understanding that this feedback may include deletion if the draft meets any of the criteria listed above. Users currently working on pages in the Draft namespace should consider moving them to userspace if they wish to have a "free" drafting space.

Note that while a user page without the {{Userspace draft}} template is a good free drafting space, it is not okay to make user pages that are unrelated to work on Wikipedia.