 | This essay is in development. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion, especially since this page is still under construction. |
| 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Deleted content can be accessed only by Wikipedia administrators. Only content that puts Wikimedia Foundation at legal risk should be treated this way; most other removed content should be accessible through article's history and the Draft space. |
We can reuse previous attempts to document a given topic by putting them in the "Draft" namespace, instead of losing it to a delete. If we archive previous drafts as we do with talk pages, the draft archive can be a good starting point to find information (prose, lists, sources...) that other editors added to the project in a way that was not ready for the main space.
"Article space is deletionist, Draft space is inclusionist".
Holding a large amount of low quality content in Draft space is not a problem - that space has been created precisely for that, as all its content is sub-standard! Its content doesn't hold more nor less weight in the database being hidden than visible, and there's no benefit in having it accessible by only a few selected elite.
We are expected to keep the process of creating the encyclopedia in the open, to expose our bias and allow anyone to assess by themselves how content is written; that won't happen if we keep hiding under the rug everything that ashames us. There's no backlog for cleaning up drafts and it would be impossible to fix all of them, with every one being a stand-alone repository of content; nor it's reasonable to expect that one can be improved to the point of being viable within any limited period of time. But by keeping it around in a place where it's stored out of the way, it can eventually arrive to the point where it can be used within an article, if enough improvements are accumulated during an arbitrary period. But if you hide verifiable information that is not problematic, it's impossible to accumulate knowledge through a slow and steady process.
Wikipedia needs in order to advance, like any other complex information project, to move a copy of its "stable" version status into a "broken" unstable version where things are allowed to change. Software projects work that way, for a very good reason: you can't make major changes without breaking something along the way, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't make major changes ever - just reserve a dedicated space where you can experiment, whether you call it "development branch" or "draft space". For the first time in years, we have a space that is not strangled by bureaucratic rules or veteran editors camping to own articles; exactly the same conditions that allowed Wikipedia to grow and become popular in the first place. Let's use them to counter our bias, allow new editors to settle and overcome the intertia that has stalled the project.