My edit summary was "not sure it is a good idea to encourage the creation of talk pages for draft articles. it is normally better for them to be discussed centrally on the article talk page". Fragmenting discussion onto draft talk pages may hide it from editors who are watching the article. I don't think any talk page is so busy that there is no room is discuss things there. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Editors interested in the draft should watch the draft, and the concept of using a specific talkpage is to separate out discussion about the draft, to help focus on that content. This should be particularly helpful in contentious contexts where threads quickly get long and discussion easily deviates from a focus on content, or can easily go off on a tangent of a minor content point, leaving other issues behind and everything a bit circular and/or unresolved. Having everything on a talk page specifically for drafting really can help keep discussion focussed and moving forward; I speak from experience. It's not magic, it's not always appropriate, but it's a good tool to have available. Rd232talk 22:25, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well my experience is a little different. It would be fairly easy for a group of editors to get together and decide on a draft article without the other editors who are involved in the article even knowing that the discussion was taking place! Could you give any examples about where you think this would be useful? Perhaps we could add it as an optional extra, in case there are situations where it is useful? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I should have pointed out this thread as well, which inspired the template: Wikipedia:VPR#Enable_Sub_Pages_in_article_space. But the type specimen for the concept is Talk:Provisional Irish Republican Army/draft, which was at the time a draft in my userspace (so with associated talk page), and I'm 100% certain it would not have worked to have that draft discussed on the main article's talk page (the draft was of course prominently linked from a related discussion there). Your suggestion "It would be fairly easy for a group of editors to get together and decide on a draft article without the other editors who are involved in the article even knowing that the discussion was taking place!" is pretty silly when you think about it, because (a) such a draft would have no credibility and (b) people can do that anyway if they really want to. Rd232talk 22:56, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
