Most of you will remember me as a 19th century military leader. My real passion, though, is shopping.
"Shoppers like shopping" - a survey by MICROS, as quoted by "City Spy". London Evening Standard. 25 July 2014. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
I seem to have fallen into the Wikipedia:Articles for creation process and cannot get out. This feels not entirely dissimilar to grain engulfment.
These are some of the things I am commonly asked about my editing. I am happy to clarify my actions further if it would be helpful... for this you could ask on my talkpage. You might get a faster response, especially on the Lord's Day, by asking at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk instead.
Please look at the information on the draft article itself for the reasons why the draft was rejected. Clicking the links in the reasons provided, can give more information.
If there is a dispute over the notability of a topic, or as to whether a Draft is unduly promotional, I usually leave it for someone else to make the next review. This helps to avoid the fate of Drafts being decided by any ignorance or unintentional bias on my part concerning a topic area.
If your Draft, after being declined, does not have a "Review waiting" box somewhere on it, then it is not submitted for review, regardless of whether you have improved it since it was declined or not... and regardless of whether you have asked on my talk page about it. You should add {{subst:submit}} to the draft page if you think it is ready for another review.
Many Wikipedia articles exist which do not meet the desirable standards... this is partly because new articles could be created without being reviewed, up until a few years ago. So when using an existing article as a comparison or an example to work from, it would be better to use a recognised Wikipedia Good Article. You can find lists of these recognised Good Articles in the various headings and sub-sections to be found after scrolling down the page at Wikipedia:Good articles. A Draft need not be quite so comprehensive or comprehensively referenced as these to be accepted, but they can help to give an idea of the sort of sources, sourcing, and tone that is required.
This is a side effect of the review process... the notification will be left on the talk page of whoever added a submit template to the draft most frequently, regardless of whether they created the draft or even have edited it significantly at all. You may have added a submit template while reverting blanking or for some other reason. Feel free to ignore these notifications if they are not relevant.
Don't worry too much about article ratings, they are merely intended to give a rough guide as an article develops. I almost never rate a newly accepted Draft better than "C", so "C" should be considered quite good, and "Start" as adequate. The presence or absence of a photograph or image does not greatly affect the rating I give a newly accepted Draft.
Normally for an article to be assessed against the criteria for being "B" class or better, you would ask at the talk page, or assessment requests page, of a relevant Wikiproject. The Wikiprojects relevant to an article can be found on the talk page of the article. There is also a Wikipedia:Good article process.
Bona fide reviewers at Articles for Creation will never contact or solicit anyone for payment to get a Draft into article space, improve a Draft, or restore a deleted article. If someone contacts you with such an offer, please post on the Articles for Creation Help Desk.
It is important for newly accepted Draft articles to be added to suitable WikiProjects, so that editors with expertise or experience in the topic area can add to them or deal with any issues that may not have been obvious to the reviewer. Where I am uncertain which WikiProjects are appropriate, I try to be over-inclusive. This gives the WikiProject members the chance to decide whether the newly created article is relevant to their WikiProject or not. They can also alter the quality rating and add an importance rating for their WikiProject.
I no longer check whether newly accepted Drafts are Orphans or not. Perhaps some people are using automated or semi-automated methods to identify such articles and add a template if appropriate.
Where formatting, grammatical, or structural issues in an article are more than trivial, I usually add a Copyedit template to the newly created Draft. I am aware that this adds it to the Guild of Copyeditors' backlog, but the Guild seems to have an efficient approach to addressing this backlog, and seems to be doing so fast enough to keep up with the rate I add them.
I normally use HotCat to add all obviously relevant categories, in as fine a degree of detail as easily possible, to newly accepted Drafts. Sometimes this may leave the article in a higher-level category than it should be. In these cases, I welcome the assistance of those who maintain such categories in moving it to an appropriate more specific category.
I'm always open to advice on how I could or should do any of this differently.
