Wikipedia:Ragpicking

This is an essay on the deletion policy.

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.

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WP:RAG

This page in a nutshell: Pages in user space or draft space that appear useless can often be left alone.

Sometimes a page in draft space or user space is nominated for deletion at MFD when it is not obvious why anyone was looking at it in the first place. Some nominations to delete pages from draft space or user space are ragpicking, rummaging through debris and then requesting to trash it. Much of what is in draft space and in user space is trash, but there is no need to take action to trash it. Draft space is largely self-trashing by G13.

User space is a storage bin. There is often no need for anyone but the named user to look at it, and like the draft space, it is not indexed by web search engines anyway. There may be rags in it, and the rags can be left alone. As deleted pages remain in the database, no server disk space would be cleared, and the data size of text is marginal in computing anyway, like water droplets in an ocean. Even pages of users who appear to be absent should be left alone, as they may return,^[1] and others in future may wish to look at it, perhaps out of curiosity and Wikiarchaeology.

There may be at least three reasons why a user subpage can be seen to be nominated for deletion: first, the page may be in a category, and there may be complex behind-the-scenes logic populating the category; second, the page may have appeared on New Page Patrol when it was created; third, an editor may have been actively ragpicking. Sometimes a nomination at MFD gives the appearance that the nominator was actively ragpicking.

Some nominations of drafts for deletion at MFD seem to show that a reviewer is applying too strict a standard to new pages in draft space or user space. It isn't necessary or useful to review new drafts or new user subpages for notability, or even for sanity. If you don't know what it is, leave it alone. If it says that person XYZ is a murderer, that is a case of knowing what it is, which is an attack page, and that should be tagged, not because you don't know what it is, but because you do know what it is. If you really don't know what something is in article space, it might be patent nonsense, a test page, or vandalism, and should be speedily deleted. It may be incomprehensible, and maybe it should be tagged. There are lots of reasons to get rid of crud from article space, which is outward-facing to the readers. There are relatively few reasons to get rid even of rags in draft space, let alone in user space.

Do not be aggressive in nominating new drafts or new user subpages for deletion. Do not go through user space, other than your own user space, looking for rags. And if you find rags in your own user space, you can trash them as U1 and G7. Some nominations at MFD appear to be ragpicking.

References

^ Example: User:2005-Fan returned in December 2019 after more than four years of absence since March 2015, discovering that pages of his user space were deleted in his absence in 2016. Both the deletion discussion and the undeletion requests needlessly wasted time, whereas there would have been no harm in leaving the few kilobytes of text alone.

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