Help:Drafts

This page is a SmashWiki help page, intended to be a guide to helping users understand SmashWiki and its functionalities. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page.

The very nature of editing on any wiki can be difficult. In particular, editing already existing articles is a lot easier than creating articles from scratch, while also making them to standard. Some users may prefer to enlist the help of their fellow contributors when creating new articles. To do this, we create drafts in our userspaces.

How to make a draft

1. Create a page titled User:Your Name/New article name.
2. Place {{draft}} at the top of the page.
3. Edit the page as you normally would.
4. When the page is complete, move it to the mainspace.

By creating a draft in your userspace, you grant other users permission to edit the page as they would a mainspace article. As always, potentially contentious information should be discussed on the talk page before adding it. The message template will also add your article to Category:Drafts.

Other things to keep in mind

• Draft pages are exempt from user page and also probation policies, although already-probated users will not be able to create or even edit drafts.
  • It is however always possible to post on an associated talk page about any suggested edits.
• Any proposed article must be notable or otherwise worthy of becoming part of the mainspace.
• Drafts created by you must be placed in your userspace. Do not use someone else's unless they have given you permission to do so.
• Sometimes, a user wishes to create an article but has not yet reached autoconfirmed status. Instead of waiting to fulfill the requirements for becoming autoconfirmed, if it's deemed they are genuine in their intentions and the article should exist, it is acceptable for another user to create a draft for the non-autoconfirmed user in their user space, allowing the non-autoconfirmed user to effectively create the article before becoming autoconfirmed. However, bypassing autoconfirmation in this way should generally have admin approval first.
• All other editing policies and guidelines apply when editing a draft. In particular, you must maintain a neutral point of view, avoid edit warring, and when the time comes, make sure that consensus is reached before moving or deleting a draft.