Talk:Basic fault theory

Decline

@DGG: I think I disagree with your decline here, though I'm not sure. The theory looks clearly notable based on Google Scholar, and I think this article is better than nothing, though I agree there is significant room for improvement. Why do you think this is worse than not having any article? I don't think the draft author is coming back at this point (hasn't edited in a year). Thanks, Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:45, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, Calliopejen1, that was back in 2019, and the author had not yet left, but edited just a few days earlier. What I have been doing since then is to keep the draft from being deleted by G13, in the hope someone would eventually notice--as you did. .I'm systematically checking all drafts close to the 6 month mark to keep alive those that might have some possibilities. It would of course certainly be much better if I fixed them, but that's too much for one person, except where I am expert and the fix is easy. Looking at it again, it should have been marked for merge, but there is no clear way of marking a draft close to expiration for merging, though I am trying various experiments there. One way would indeed have been to accept and then mark for merge, and I've done it a few times to see hat happens-- I'm not sure that unless I myself went back to it that would ever be noticed also. In this particular instance it isn't really rhe case that here would be no article, as the topic is mentioned to a substantial degree in the bio.

How to deal with drafts -- or neglected articles-- that might become satisfactory is an unsolved problem. It wasaproblem back when I joined in 2006, and it's been getting progressively more serious since then. DGG ( talk ) 22:29, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

@DGG: I may just accept this one, then. I agree that that is a big problem. My general inclination is to ask whether the draft is a net positive, and if so to accept, and others can do cleanup in mainspace. I think this draft is a net positive and is more likely to be cleaned up in mainspace than here. There is now a usually-daily report of what has actually been deleted as G13, and I go through those as often as they are generated, though for some reason the bot misses some days. I find that there are usually ~2 good drafts per day actually deleted. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I undelete them and promote them (or occasionally leave in draftspace, or even just watchlist the deleted draft for later analysis... depends). Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Calliopejen1, there is is no need or expectation or even desirability for all of us to have identical standards or work the same way. I agree roughly with your estimate--I'm fairly sure here are at least 5% drafts incorrectly deleted, as distinct from the many more debatable ones; there are probably at least as many incorrectly accepted, again as distinct from the many more debatable ones. We do not want widely divergent standards, but I do not consider our disagreement of handling this to be in that range. I think I mentioned that I check the ones about to be ready for G13 except in fields I do not understand like sport and popular culture, and its good to know someone is checking the next stage also, and no doubt with a different set of fields. (btw, where is that report?) . DGG ( talk ) 05:46, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

@DGG: The report is User:SDZeroBot/G13 Watch. I've asked the creator to consider creating a similar reports to be processed ~24 hours after article submission, one for declined drafts and one for drafts that remain pending. Maybe article size should be added to all of the reports, because tiny articles usually are unreferenced and/or aren't worth worrying much about. If you think the my new proposed reports would be useful,, please chime in at the bot creator's talk page! FYI, I agree that our standards are generally similar, which is actually why I asked you rather than just approving this draft unilaterally (which is what I often do with declines I disagree with.) I don't know that I see many "incorrect" accepts, particularly because an accept of a marginal article can be dealt with using normal deletion processes later. In my view incorrect declines are considerably worse because they alienate good contributors and often result in the permanent loss of content.... Calliopejen1 (talk) 13:51, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

the list of submissions that remain pending is Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days ago , Category:AfC pending submissions by age/1 day ago, etc. I usually tru to check the 0 every day to try to spot particularly good ones to accept immediately, or particularly damaging ones to speedy delete or reject. The size shows when one hovers. I pick which ones to hover over or work on by intuition, which I could expand into quite a long discussion of diagnostic characteristics . If you look at the next few edits after this timestamp you'll see today's batch.

I have a long mental list of possible improvements in the process; the amount of arguing it would take to get each one of them is discouraging. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@DGG: yeah, i know about the categories. What's good about this report is that it has the first few sentences of each article. That's generally enough to identify most good ones quickly. (Assuming you're not looking for the almost-needle-in-a-haystack non-advertising BLPs.) I didn't know about the hover behavior. Unfortunately I do a fair amount of reviewing on mobile so that won't help for much of my reviewing... Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:48, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Calliopejen1, so does Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions if you hover over the titles. I work by skipping over the half I can't evaluate, then seeing that of the remainder about half aren't worth bothering about, and opening the rest, and reading them. The ones we both will miss is where the key statement about why the person is important isn't in the first paragraph or so, --unless of course we recognize the subject. (& I will open and read any that seems to be someone who is a professor or an MP.) There are many ways, all of which work, but would work better if there were more people doing them. DGG ( talk ) 19:24, 19 October 2020 (UTC)