User:Primefac/Thoughts on rejection

Drafts submitted to the Articles for creation process are reviewed by experienced editors who will evaluate a page based on its suitability for inclusion on Wikipedia; does it meet the Golden Rule for articles? If a draft is not acceptable, it is usually declined. However, if the draft will never be acceptable, reviewers have the option of rejecting it and preventing further resubmission.

History

In mid-2018 discussion was raised about drafts that fall into the "no way, no how, go away" category (e.g. GARAGEBAND drafts), leading to the reject option being added to the {{AfC submission}} toolbox to go with the "soft" decline options. For better or worse, the documentation was updated to only include a single paragraph about rejection towards the bottom of the page, which has since led to frequent questions from reviewers (both new and old) as to the "best" times to use it.

When to reject a draft

Caveat: These are of course my opinions, and other people will fall on different sides of this question, but I speak based on discussions that have happened over the last 7 years and do incorporate some measure of project consensus

In my opinion, if you are in doubt about whether to reject a draft, don't. Rejection is really meant for those articles that will never be acceptable (barring some huge sea-change or "overnight sensation" type virality that launches a non-notable individual into the GNG spotlight) and should not be used slapdash just because the editor might be annoying.

If you are looking at a draft and thinking one of the following, do not reject:

These references are all terrible, but a few good ones would make them notable (sol'n: decline as rs)
The person is an <insert popular career>, there are few/no RS but the claims are GNG-worthy (sol'n: decline as bio or rs or both as necessary)
- Obviously, ridiculous/unreasonable claims would fall into the "hoax" territory and should not be considered in a reject/decline framework
Anything that doesn't immediately make you think "why does this editor think <subject> deserves an article?!?"

Tendentious resubmissions

While not necessarily in the above list, tendentious resubmissions in general should not be rejected; just because a draft has been declined a half-dozen times does not mean that it should be rejected upon resubmission. If the editor is resubmitting without actually improving the draft, a rejection will just cause them to move to a different disambiguator and try again. Tendentious resubmissions should be dealt with through discussion with the user, sanctions, and potentially deletion (if the problem gets bad enough) in that order.

Discussion never hurts

If in doubt, by all means ask for a second/third opinion at WT:AFC; it's one of the reasons the page exists.