User:Geo Swan/excising redundant userspace draft templates
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Another contributor said they felt it was necessary to add {{userspace draft}} templates to every subpage under User:Geo Swan.
I asked them to stop, because I thought those templates were redundant -- and disruptive.
These templates put a space consuming warning box at the top of each sub-page. Several hundred of these userspace subpages were transcluded. This resulted in the warnings being transcluded dozens of times in some files. I found this highly disruptive.
In fact I asked this other contributor to stop several times. I reminded them of the advice in WP:User pages#Editing of other editors' user and user talk pages:
"In general, it is usual to avoid substantially editing another's user and user talk pages other than where it is likely edits are expected and/or will be helpful. If unsure, ask. If a user asks you not to edit their user pages, it is probably sensible to respect their requests..."
Their reply, if I understood it, was that the material under User:Geo Swan (1) was particularly controversial; (2) the author (me) had included lots of material that was POV.
The other contributor reminded me that I don't own the material under User:Geo Swan.
I never thought I owned that material. I don't believe I have ever asserted that I owned this material. I believe that all this material is consistent with policy.
I do not agree with the assertion that this material is POV. Much of this material is referenced to WP:RS. This other contributor routinely claims materials violates WP:NPOV when it is based on WP:RS, and when I have thought it neutrally quoted or summarized what the RS have to say, without including any novel synthesis. I have done my very best to understand this contributors claims that material I contributed violated WP:NPOV. I am afraid they have not proven as clear and forthcoming as I would have liked, when asked to be specific. But I now believe I understand their claims. It seems to me they have a misunderstanding of core elements of WP:NPOV and WP:VER, and feel authorized to call material lapsed from WP:NPOV when they personally doubted the credibility of what those RS had to say. And I believe their claims that the material on subpages under User:Geo Swan violates WP:NPOV is based on this same misinterpretation of the policy.
Since we still disagreed, I sought input at WP:Village pump (technical). I thought the most significant input, around when {{userspace draft}} templates were redundant, stated:
"...if you don't care about the box, then yes, its redundant".
The reason I created this note is that I plan to excise the redundant templates, as I come across them, and to place a link to this note in each edit summary, when I do so.