User:Tamzin/Plausible drafts

CSD U5 leaves an exception for "plausible drafts", but doesn't define what that actually is. I've often felt that many admins ignore that exception, and wrote WP:NOTU5 about that, but at the same time, I do need some working definition of my own to use when patrolling CAT:U5, and that's not something I'm going to find directly in policy. Instead, I've come up with the following, based on some things that are in policy.

Is it a draft?

If something simply isn't a draft, the plausibility question doesn't matter. Many pages I delete under U5 make no claim of being a draft—for instance, personal essays, fiction, and other content unrelated to an encyclopedia.

There are also pages that may at least assert factual information, but still aren't drafts because they don't attempt to be encyclopedia articles. This is a matter of approach, not style: Even something that violates every rule in the Manual of Style is fine if it presents information in a somewhat encyclopedic fashion. But, for instance, a curriculum vitae or a persuasive essay is not a draft, even if they may bear some similarities.

Is it plausible?

There are a few terms of art used for drafts and articles, which constitute a rough spectrum: notability, significance, plausibility, and implausibility. The latter two are what we're seeking to define here, but we can build downward from the former two to get there.

Notability

Defined at great length at Wikipedia:Notability and its various subpages. The overriding principle is encapsulated in the General notability guideline, by which A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

Significance

A lower standard than notability, used in CSDs A7, A9, and A11 to weed out articles in select topics that are particularly far from notability. A credible claim of significance (CCS) can take the form of stating why the subject is important in some way, or showing that they are covered in reliable sources. For instance, "John Doe is an American programmer who developed ObscureApp" does not show a CCS (unless covered in reliable sources), but "John Doe is an American programmer who is one of the lead maintainers of NotableSoftware" does (assuming that the statement is true). However, bear "credible" in mind: A draft blankly asserting that the subject is renowned, popular, influential, or famous, without providing any explanation of why, is not a credible claim.

Plausibility

If there is even a vague chance that a draft's subject is notable, it has to be considered plausible. If a draft falls under a subject that is held to a lower standard of notability—for instance, eukaryotic species—this is usually enough to count as that vague chance. And U5 could have used the word "significant," but didn't. Thus, any draft that makes a CCS (even for something that wouldn't be CCS-covered in mainspace) should be considered plausible, and so should many that don't! Drafts are works in progress by definition, and maybe that "American programmer who developed ObscureApp" is about to be expanded with a CCS.

Implausibility

What I do consider so insignificant as to be implausible is a draft that doesn't explain why the subject is in any way distinct from your average schmuck on the street, for instance "John Doe is a freelance web developer. He's a hard worker and has great people skills" and then some run-of-the-mill biographical info. (However, if the page is someone's top-level userpage and appears autobiographical, it may nonetheless be appropriate to keep as a regular "about me" userpage, or to pare it down to something WP:UPYES-compliant.)

There are a few other things I'd consider implausible for reasons other than lack of significance:

• A draft written so badly as to be essentially incoherent, even if not quite to the level of CSD G1.
• A draft that appears to be a joke or otherwise unserious, even if not quite to the level of CSD G3. (Unless it's a good enough joke.)

However, these do have to clearly be attempts at drafts, as test pages and humor are allowed under UPYES.

LLM use

In borderline cases, I am much less likely to give something the benefit of the doubt if it appears to be written by ChatGPT or another large language model. Part of why we should hesitate to delete content is that users have put hard work into it. I am much more sympathetic to a borderline-spammy autobio someone wrote from scratch, than one churned out by ChatGPT in a few seconds.

Closing thoughts

None of this is policy, just my interpretation of a vague word by following the spirit of some related policies. I'd absolutely welcome a clearer word than "plausible" in U5, or at least a consensus definition of what it means. But until that day, this is how I define it.