Wikipedia talk:User pages/Archive 5

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Personal attacks in an archived user sub page

I would like to get some clarifications regarding WP:UP#NOT items #9 & 10. It seems fairly clear to me that those guidleines mean that attack pages are inappropriate in user space (including subpages). However, at a [1] recent discussion] on AN/I, several administrators have taken the position that if the attack is in an archived page, there's nothing wrong with it, since it is unlikely to be seen. Should we update WP:UP#NOT #9 & #10 accordingly, to reflect this? NoCal100 (talk)

Your ANI link will rot as soon as the thread it refers to is archived from the fast-moving ANI board, and then people here will only have access to your self-serving description of the discussion. I've changed it to a permanent link, I hope you don't mind. For how to create a permanent link, see Simple diff and link guide. And no, please let's not keep adding instruction creep to this page. All the cases that a wikilawyer can dream up can never be covered in the text of policies and guidelines. Instead, we apply common sense to individual cases that aren't specifically mentioned in "the rules". Bishonen | talk 01:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC).

Thank you for fixing the link. I already know that in your opinion WP:UP#NOT does not apply to archived sub-pages, that's why I posted here, to get a broader community perspective. Once we clarify whether or not the guideline applies to sub-pages, we can discuss if that needs to be made explicit in the the text of the guideline. I really don't see how a simple 'Note:This guideline applies/does not apply to subpages' is instruction creep, but reasonable people can disagree on this. NoCal100 (talk) 01:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I've not followed the link, nor do I know what it's regarding, but right off the bat, I'd say no: no attack pages anywhere, for any reason. I don't see why that would be controversial. IronDuke 01:51, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

You might try following it, then. There can certainly be at least two opinions as to whether the page in question is an attack page. There often can, where the userspace is concerned, which is one of the reasons it's a poor idea to add text that encourages people to go looking for user subpages they don't like. It tends to raise the battleground stakes. Bishonen | talk 02:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC).

I think it's irrelevant to NoCal's question... he may be wrong about the page in question, but right in principle. Nevertheless, I shall take a look... IronDuke 02:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I read it. First off, Bish, I feel you owe me some as yet to be announced favor for that appalling bit of doggerel you made me read. Forget about ATTACK, what of WP:SCANSION? What about my precious eyes? Right... that said, three things occur: 1) Yes, it is an attack. Not the most brutal attack ever on WP, but still an attack. 2) It violates SOAP and NOT... please no political screeds -- anywhere. 3) What earthly good does it do? If the concerns are serious, raise them in a serious manner, at the appropriate page. IronDuke 03:08, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

IronDuke is spot on. There might be some difference of opinion as to whether the page in question is an attack page - but that is not the subject of this discussion, nor the crux of the objection you raised on the ANI page - which was that attack pages are ok if they are in archived sub-pages. If you'd like to argue that the specific page in question is not an attack page, please do so on the ANI discussion page. This discussion is about the applicability of WP:UP#NOT, in general, to archived user sub-pages. NoCal100 (talk) 02:59, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, come on, I'm not going to repeat myself on this page as well; I'm done. I can't tell if you're ignoring the main points of my posts above, or if you simply missed them. I'll leave it to your conscience. Bishonen | talk 04:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC).

Sorry, who was that directed to? (Wasn't sure if you saw my second post above.) IronDuke 04:56, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Per thread formatting, it was a response to the post immediately above it (=not to you). Yes, I saw it. Bishonen | talk 07:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC).

Ignoring your main points? what would those be? I've responded to your point about "instruction creep". I'm now waiting for wider community input. NoCal100 (talk) 15:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Removing people's comments

Any problems with this edit of mine? I added this:

A user can also remove anyone's comments from their own talk pages during an active discussion.

--Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:57, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Other than the fact that it is totally redundant with the previous sentence? Users are allowed to remove content at will from their own talk pages, so the distinction between "active" and "inactive" discussions is irrelevant. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:02, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok sounds good. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

User Talk cannot be redirect: codify it, or don't enforce it.

Aeons ago, I was dragged off to ANI by an individual for making my User Talk a redirect to my user page.
If something is serious enough to drag someone off to ANI for (NOTE: I disagree with this idea anyhow; consider it admin meddling in places that aren't their concern), then it should be codified. Probably in more than one place. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 02:04, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I added the note "User talk pages should not redirect unless the user is indefinitely blocked." Because this is a collaborative project, it is imperative that users be able to communicate with each other, and the user talk page is the primary method of communication between users. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:47, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

NPOV

It is not clear that whethter NPOV applies to the user pages or not--محمد.رضا (talk) 23:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

No, generally speaking, NPOV does not apply to anything other than articles and portals. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Link from article to userpages?

Are users allowed to link to their or someone else's userpages if it relates to the article? Well there are userboxes... but I don't think a list or references related to the article on their userpage can be linked? --staka (T) 17:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Given that you won't find a link to User:Jimbo Wales on the article Jimmy Wales, it would be safe to say that this isn't something anyone would put on any other article. However, the reverse (a link to Jimmy Wales on User:Jimbo Wales) is perfectly acceptable. Anyway... I'm sure it has been brought up before, but I'd check the archives on User talk:Jimbo Wales and Talk:Jimmy Wales for more information. --Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 18:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Just checked, there is a link. If I were you, I'd ask on Talk:Jimmy Wales to get a quicker and better response. --Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 18:27, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Alright. --staka (T) 00:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Old IP talk pages

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive180#Deletion of old IP talk pages. Thoughts? Objections to adding a note here to reduce confusion? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:36, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

There should be some way to make individual warnings just sort of 'fade away' over time. Maybe with templates that are changed out over a certain schedule? Then the page itself would not be edited, and would only show that a particular template was added at some point, and then removed maybe a year later. bd2412 T 22:02, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Almost all user warning templates are (intentionally) substituted. I think a feature request to have page text fade after a while would get laughed at if I filed it in Bugzilla. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Not talking about a feature, just putting a time-specific template on the page, say {{warn1208}} for a warning added in December of 2008. Evey month, a new template would be generated, with the usual warning info, and left on the IP talk page unsubstituted. After a few months, the template would be pared down to just a notification that a warning had been left on that page in December of 2008. After a year, the template would be blanked. All without making any further edits to the IP talk pages. And, after two years with no edits emanating from an IP address, the talk page gets deleted. Once no more pages exist which are linked to the template, the template gets deleted as well. bd2412 T 22:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Possible from the technical side, but do you want to be the one to try to implement it? Sounds like way more hassle than it would ultimately be worth. You'd have to develop an appropriate system. You'd then have to get the developers of Huggle, Twinkle, and every other vandalism warning script / tool to modify their code. And even if those two obstacles were overcome, you'd still be battling forked versions of the scripts and people tagging manually and every other corner case. Personally, I'm in favor of the simplest solution possible. :-) To me, that means looking at concrete info (last contribution, timestamp of last edit to talk page, etc.) and making determinations based on it.

Either way, we seem to be getting a bit sidetracked. I'm more interested in whether the criteria I've been using are appropriate and should be written down (and linked to from deletion summaries) to alleviate some of the concerns we've seen... --MZMcBride (talk) 22:23, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the deletions I was doing, I look at four criteria:

Never been blocked
Not using any templates
No edits within the last year
No talk page activity within the last year

Could any of these be improved / expanded / neglected? I realize bd2412 views 1 and 2 as somewhat unnecessary, but I think it does no harm to skip the pages in order to be overly cautious. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

The criteria look fine to me, but I have problems with the action. Blanking seems like the more sensible thing to do, IMHO, simply because we won't lose the talk page history. There is the erroneous "new message", of course, but it's the lesser of two evils. The talk page could be replaced with a "This talk page has been archived on $DATE." message to lessen the confusion, too. --Conti|✉ 23:12, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Eh? The German Wikipedia deletes the pages. And the user contributions are still entirely visible (though really that almost never makes a difference after a year). There's no redeeming quality to keeping this pages around indefinitely in my mind. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

It's better to have them than not to have them. Lots of archives we have are probably not needed at all, but that doesn't mean we should delete them to get rid of minor inconveniences. --Conti|✉ 23:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the resulting talk page message is a tech issue too. Why does a change to the talk page result in such a message? Because our software tells it to. Suppose we get a fix in the software that lets an admin blank an IP talk page without putting up the "new message" sign? bd2412 T 00:18, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

That would be perfect, of course. Come to think of it, bots don't trigger the "new message" bar, either, do they? A bot should do this job in the first place, so maybe there's no problem with this in the first place. --Conti|✉ 00:28, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

... except we end up with thousands of blanked talk pages sitting around. Truly, if they're going to be blanked, they may as well be deleted. These things do add up when doing things like database queries. You have the thousands of revisions on the talk pages currently plus thousands of more revisions to blank the page. Using the criteria above, what's the harm in deletion? Has there been any evidence that there is any? --MZMcBride (talk) 00:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't we ask this the other way around, tho? What do we gain from deletion? The obvious disadvantage from deletion is that we lose the page history. Sure, in most cases it probably will never be needed, but, as I said, that's true for most archives. That's not a very good reason to delete, tho. And I very much doubt that the database will care much either way. A couple of thousands more or less revisions in a wiki with millions and millions of revisions probably won't make much of a difference. I wouldn't mind to hear a developer's opinion on this, tho. And anyhow, the revisions won't go away either way, since admins can still access them. In the end, if we have the choice between a blanked page and a deleted page, I think we should prefer a blanked page. I see no disadvantage in that, and a few minor advantages. --Conti|✉ 01:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Assume we have 1,000 talk pages each with one revision. If you go through and blank them, you're now at 2,000 revisions. If you delete them, the revisions are moved to the archive table (essentially going from 1,000 to 0) and are no longer cluttering up the revision table or my SQL query results. ;-) And the fact that the revisions aren't truly gone is yet another reason why deletion is really no big deal, no? Blank pages really are simply annoying and if we can avoid creating blank pages, I would prefer that option. When you come across them, it's unclear whether a blank page is the result of vandalism, a right to vanish attempt, or whatever. "So just leave a note saying it was blanked by a bot." That seems rather unnecessary. A red link is much quicker and easier to understand than a blue link that leads to a note about blanking. At the AN discussion you mentioned the possibility of the pages being linked to. Would it satisfy you to check for backlinks and delete only if there are none?

They're old pages. They're almost exclusively automated warnings for petty vandalism. Other wikis deal with this exact same issue by deleting the pages. It seems like the most sensible option to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I can't really respond to the technical part, since I'm not much of a techie myself, but my spontaneous answer would be that - in a project the size of Wikipedia - 1000 additional revisions don't matter at all. I'm sure even 10,000 revisions aren't that much of a big deal, either, but I could be wrong, of course. I mean (and I'm saying this as someone who really doesn't know the answer to this question), where's the difference between 1000 additional revisions and 1000 additional entries in the deletion log? The revisions will be really gone for everyone who's not an admin, tho, and I consider that a big deal, and a thing that should be avoided wherever possible. I think in the end our personal preferences are just different here. I'd rather have a blank page than a deleted one, but I can see why you might think otherwise. Personally, blue links that lead to empty pages tend to annoy me, too (curse you, Wikiprojects!), but I prefer that over a message that the page has been deleted.

Checking for backlinks would definitely be an improvement, yes. That wouldn't really resolve the issue, tho, since I still consider blanking to be the more appropriate action. All in all I don't consider this to be the most important issue ever, tho, so if people disagree with me, I'm fine with that. I'd just rather keep the history of Wikipedia wherever possible. :) --Conti|✉ 01:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you make a good point about page history, and Kim has beaten it pretty well into my head that we should mark things as {{historical}} rather than delete them when possible to be able to learn from mistakes and keep our history intact. In fact, I've even been (trying) to write an essay at Meta about page history / log manipulation (and any help would be appreciated ;-) . So I definitely see what you're saying about preserving important history and I try to ensure that any deletions I do anywhere on the project don't destroy anything valuable (I almost exclusively stick to speedy deletions). But with these automated "You vandalized here, bad boy" messages, the value is really quite minimal in my mind and I think in yours too. I agree that a backlinks check is prudent regardless of what ultimately decides to be done with these pages. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any point in keeping them around, the only time IP talk pages serve a purpose is for tracking long term abuse from schools and the like. Blanking doesn't really solve the maintenance problem, at least with deletion the next run through the list of pages will be much smaller. BJ^Talk 01:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Came here from AN. Looking at MZM's exact criteria... I'd say delete 'em. Who really cares if the IP got warned one or two times a year ago. I don't care who the IP belongs to today, anything that happened (and stopped happening) a year ago is irrelevant anyhow. Far preferable to me at least, to redlink the talkpage, not cause any unneeded confusion, and move on. SQL^{Query me!} 01:51, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
- As MZMcBride has alluded to above, I don't think it matters if the IP was blocked, so long as no block has been in effect for over a year. The whole rationale for treating IP talk pages differently is that they are dynamic. If the page has not been edited in a year, and no edits have come from that IP address in over a year, I'd say that is enough. As for templates, why should it matter if there are templates on the page? There are millions of IP addresses out there for which we could throw a template on the talk page indicating the school or institution to which the address resolves, but we haven't bothered to because no one has yet edited from there. It serves no purpose to keep an identifying template on a page from which no one is editing (especially since even assigned IPs change from time to time). bd2412 T 02:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Have to disagree with you guys there, as block notices and {{ISP}} tags are very useful when researching SSP reports. If we automatically deleted all IP talk pages after only a year of inactivity (regardless of templates and blocks), then Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mariam83 would lose 60% of its members, which would make tracking down Mariam`s socks that much more difficult. The four criteria listed above by MZMcBride look very good to me. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Easy solution: move the sock notices to the IP's user page, rather than the talk. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I was more referring to warnings, than blocks. SQL ^{Query me!} 03:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Really? Here's the very first page on the list: User talk:62.141.48.177. According to the page itself, the IP address was reassigned over six months ago. What is the point of labeling an IP user talk page as a suspected sockpuppet? Even if it is from a publicly accessible computer (e.g. in a library), it could just as easily be used by a vandal or a contributor - and even if it is, it could be reassigned at any time with no notice to us. If there has been no activity from an IP address in over a year, chances are very good that any vandal who ever posted from that address no longer has it. bd2412 T 04:54, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

That's what I was trying to get at too :P I think I failed at some point... SQL ^{Query me!} 05:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if anyone saw it on AN, so I'll repost my comment here. User talk pages are normally not deleted because they have content that might be relevant at some time in the future, such as a discussion or sockpuppet templates (though I question the usefulness of putting a sock template on an IP talk page). In this case, any content is going to be completely irrelevant. For example, my current IP address is 71.227.54.220, one address in a block of 16,000 dynamic-ish IPs used by Comcast in southern Michigan. It was used for vandalism in 2006, then again nearly a year later in 2007, then a few months later, it reverted some vandalism. In the time between the first instance of vandalism and now, its probably been reassigned at least 3 times. Most likely more, since the odds of it being reassigned to 4 Wikipedia editors (including vandals) in a row is pretty unlikely. Any message on it or in the page history (how many vandal patrollers seriously check the page history for warnings?) is going to be completely irrelevant after each reassignment. Mr.Z-man 03:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

So, here's the idea. We create a redirect like WP:OLDIP that links to a subsection of this page (Wikipedia:User page) and it explains that a IP talk page can be deleted or blanked if:

Never been blocked
Not using any unsubstituted templates (e.g., {{SharedIPEDU}})
No edits within the last year
No talk page activity within the last year
No incoming links to the page

Does that sound reasonable? I'm trying to think of a way to say that some of these can safely be ignored if blanking, but I'm not really coming up with one... --MZMcBride (talk) 17:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Going twice? ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

You should probably add a note to #2 about transcluded templates so that others do not have the same misunderstanding I had. Otherwise I think the above criteria look great! --Kralizec! (talk) 18:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Clarified a bit. Does that look better? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks! --Kralizec! (talk) 21:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Added to the guideline. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be deletion by the backdoor. We have a process for deleting pages without discussion; it's called Speedy Deletion. If deleting these pages is seen as desirable then proposing a new criterion for speedy deletion is, I think, the only way forward. Martin 12:15, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

When you say "we have a process for deleting pages without discussion," that seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding. Speedy deletion defines clear cut cases for the purposes of an efficient system, but it does not preclude administrators from deleting things that don't fall under it. There's a long, long history of administrators deleting pages without the need to cite a specific criterion (though in this case I believe CSD#G6 would clearly apply and I used it previously). There is also pretty extensive precedent for pages in the user space to be deleted (see also CAT:TEMP). Ultimately, it's a matter of whether the deletions are controversial, which I don't believe they are. And linking to this guideline gives everyone an understanding of what the situation is. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I see no problem with this either. There is a list of very specific requirements that pages must meet in order to qualify for this deletion, which I agree can also be considered housekeeping. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

ARGH... I hate forum shopping... This discussion is now ongoing elsewhere: here and here --- Plus Mz's talk page. I think we need to consolodate these three conversations into one area and hash out specifics for incorporating this into G6 or a new criteria.---Balloonman ^PoppaBalloonTake the CSD Survey 15:00, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think deleting old IP talk pages is good policy. I've been editing from dynamic IP addresses for many years so I've used a lot of them, and I've engaged in discussion on several of their usertalk pages that are relevant to articles that I was editing at the time, and sometimes I even refer back to those old discussions. They should not be treated differently than talk pages of enrolled accounts that haven't been edited for a while. 208.120.235.110 (talk) 02:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you have examples of past IP talk pages? And, by actively not registering an account, isn't control of a talk page something you're intentionally forfeiting? That is, if you really cared about these talk page discussions and such, account creation takes seconds. There's no reason to avoid it.... --MZMcBride (talk) 19:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Frist things to read for new users...

Why is it so hard to find this page? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_page

This should be one of the first 3 things to be read, perferealy before the wall'o'text general rules...(which some avoid or glaze over....raises hand).

Yes I know I am a hyperactive moron even then I tend to follow the rules..just not always read walls of text... it should be very very very clear that user pages are for wiki use and not general blogging/personal idiocies.

Not only should a message stating as such be in the welcome message but be on the user page itself as either a foot holder for blank pages or a simple advocatcational warning/recommendation of the rules around the page somewhere.

This noob thought personal space was more for general user info than notes for actives for wiki for said user..

I don't know how much a problem it is with people using user pages for general user info but if its an annoyance its probably more do to noobs not knowing better than whole sale circumvention of the rules.

I do apologize if I am using wiki incorrectly I am a noob after all, heck I just found the easy sign your post command not 2 days ago.... Zippydsmlee (talk) 07:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Removing warnings

I'd like to suggest that we reword the 'removing warnings' section of the page. When users remove warnings it makes it difficult for those who use Huggle to issue the appropriate warning levels, as well as allowing editors to continually receive level 1 warnings and evade scrutiny for a time.

I'd propose that the wording be something like "...may remove warnings if they are at least one week old, otherwise they must be kept on the page."

We should also beef up the declined unblock requests and sockpuppet clauses; currently the guideline states that declined unblocks may be an exception. This should state unequivocally that declined unblocks and sock notices are an absolute exception to removing whatever you like. //roux 13:48, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the text on the page explains exactly why removing warnings is and should be allowed. If you find that makes it hard for you to give appropriate warnings, then you should be spending more time understanding a user's history before trying to hand out warnings. Or better yet, engage the user rather than getting caught up worrying about what template to give out in what order. Dragons flight (talk) 14:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The official vandalism policy was explicitly updated [2] 1,102 days ago to reflect the fact that editors may remove content at will from their own talk pages. Every time this issue has been revisited since then, community consensus has very clearly re-affirmed the decision. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

People can edit their own talk pages until they abuse that privilege to the point that an admin takes the privilege away. I think this is how it should be. The problem is that the people using huggle to issue the warnings don't check the history of the user and their contributions to see if they have caused problems with the past. This is something anyone issuing warnings could do that would really help. Chillum 15:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Anyone interested in reviewing the most recent community discussion on this topic may review it in the April 2008 VPP archive. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Once Huggle has seen a warning be issued, it remembers this regardless of what else is done to the page, so it cannot be fooled in this way more than once -- Gurch (talk) 12:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

the rahm emmanual bio is not neutral

Hello. I think the Rahm Emmanual entry in Wikipedia is biased. It is focused on his Jewishness to an extreme extent. I have not seen another bio in Wikipedia that is so focused on the person's ethnicity. It may be mentioned, but then the piece goes on to talk about the person, not his nationaliy or ethnicity. Most of this article is devoted to Emmanual in the context of his being Jewish and his interests and actions from that standpoint. This is biased, and I feel strongly that it needs to be changed and made fair. Thank you. rachaelraps@copper.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.252.179.24 (talk) 20:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

This is the incorrect place to discuss issues within a specific article like that. This talk page is for discussing the guideline on users' pages. I suggest you bring up your concerns on the talk page of the article here. That's the place for discussing article problems. --Bill ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Blanking

I appreciate that users are permitted to blank comments from their talk pages on a whim (though not to edit other users' comments' meanings) but is it acceptable for someone selectively to remove my comments in a way that makes it look as though I have failed to respond to them (presumably so it appears as though I am in the wrong). These actions include deliberately modifying the indentation in a way that makes it appear as though my comments have never existed.LaFoiblesse (talk) 2009-02-18 18h20 (GMT)

A gross misrepresentation of reality. New responses have been removed, there is nothing selective about it. Basically, you have been told to go away. The originals were only left to provide context for the conversation between others that began because of your inappropriate editing of my user page and subsequent off-the-wall defense of said editing. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 18:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

AnmaFinotera, that is ever so insincere of you. Obviously I can only hypothesize about your reasoning for altering the conversation to make it appear as though I have failed to respond, but one cannot gain the last word in a discussion by deleting the facts. Anyway, I await a disinterested party's opinion.LaFoiblesse (talk) 2009-02-18 18h40 (GMT)

Sorry, but no, I'm not altering the conversation. Its been ended, at least with you. Stop trying to post to my talk page and there won't be anymore problem. As there is a clear note saying I've removed your responses, your claim that I didn't leave a note is incorrect. However, per your continued persistence in posting to my user talk page, despite being repeatedly told not to, I've now posted a clear note stating such. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 18:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Users can remove comments from their talk pages as they wish. In any case, there doesn't appear to be any intent from AnmaFinotera to misrepresent you. Dayewalker (talk) 18:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your inclusion of an explanation of the situation. I now consider this particular issue to be resolved. LaFoiblesse (talk) 2009-02-18 18h53 (GMT).

Removing a comment from your own talk page is considered an acknowledgment that you have read the message. The only kinds of talk page messages that cannot be removed (as per the WP:BLANKING section of this guideline) are declined unblock requests (but only while blocks are still in effect), confirmed sockpuppet notices, or IP header templates (for unregistered editors). However it should be noted that these exceptions only exist in order to keep a user from potentially gaming the system. --Kralizec! (talk) 18:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

All right, thank you for the clarification. My only concern was that, as another user was already involved in the discussion, it was not necessarily evident to all parties involved how the discussion had transpired. Still, in future I will refrain from entering discussions with such people.LaFoiblesse (talk) 2009-02-18 19h05 (GMT).

Page talk archives

I have for the moment reverted User:Jclemens good faith modification to the article, pending acceptable wording. I do not believe the intention of the guideline is to prevent housekeeping. In that sense, the wording is too broad - archives which are cut and paste should never be included, as it hinders more than it helps userspace management. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:16, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Your reversion was not in good faith because of your conflict of interest. A case is pending regarding the restoration of your own archives. And didn't you use page moves for your archives? Tennis expert (talk) 23:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

"Leechers"

I wrote an essay of sorts here: User:MZMcBride/User pages. I'd be curious about any thoughts regarding it. Specifically, I think codifying some aspects of it into this guideline might be a good idea. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Some allowances for users testing things out, in preparation for mainspace edits, would be appropriate. "Leechers" may be too pejorative a label--how about "non-contributing users" instead? I generally agree with the thrust of the page, but think it could be safely toned down while still accomplishing the essential goals. Jclemens (talk) 07:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't like the term "leechers" either, but English seems to be rather limited here. (Feel free to edit the page, by the way.)

More broadly, I think something similar to WP:OLDIP should be created for these types of pages. Something where we set a deadline and such and then nuke the old pages. Perhaps after a year of no edits and the page isn't marked with a sockpuppet tag?

My biggest concern is pages like User:Hairyfairy. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I would have G10'ed that. There's no proof that the page owner is the named individual, so I'd be happy to G10 alleged self-disparagement, too. Jclemens (talk) 08:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any thoughts on the broader idea of setting up something like WP:NONCON (non-contributor) that points to this guideline? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd move it into Wikipedia space and mark it as an essay first, but yeah, WP:NONCON sounds like an appropriate shortcut. Jclemens (talk) 05:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Starting user page,

Hi here I am artist Nikki, and wanting to post my bio on wikipedia with examples of work. How do I do this? I started a bio and it is gone?? so obviously I am doing this wrong> Please give input and guidance? Thanks Nikki —Preceding unsigned comment added by NikkiNichols (talk • contribs) 14:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't write an article about yourself. If you are, in fact, notable - someone else will write about you in a neutral way. Please also read our conflict of interests guide. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

'This Is A Userpage' templates

Is the project page implying a userpage notification should be at the top? Mine has so much at the top that I needed a TOC, but I put it at the top, so I made a TOC with a link that says 'This is a Wikipedia user page,' and after the TOC the box section's title and box's link both go to this project page. That could work for anyone that has not edited too much, but already I needed a TOC. Userboxes are supposed to be collapsible, but apparently you need to write your page's sections in separate files to do that.

One of my parents is a librarian; I study Comp. Sci., and I have ideas about how this project page and its example can be made clearer and more useful for both new readers/users and those who are starting to learn how to use their the Wikimedia project accounts much more.

Most longtime editors have a detailed page of that nature: is there no page suggesting how, or is it time for one? I guess it would not be a beginning user page. Even if the admin page has something like that, perhaps there should be an easier way to get to a page to help those who do not just want to know what they can have on a user page, but what might help inform other editors and help themselves and any editor who comes to their page.

It is common or usual for a library homepage to have a short piece of info/description about it and large resources menu.

I did not know about tabs, and I forgot when the userbox controversy started and why, but examples with these too would help: TOC of articles edited or created, or both, or one for each subject; methods for people that like HTML or 'WTML' or both or other MLs; any other notational/computer languages used here; userboxes, etc., and because the projects are growing, examples for editors in different disciplines would help.--Dchmelik (talk) 11:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

OLDIP

The page says:

Talk pages of anonymous users may be blanked or deleted as part of routine housekeeping if they meet the following criteria:

Never been blocked
Not using any unsubstituted templates (e.g., {{SharedIPEDU}})
No edits within the last year
No talk page activity within the last year
No incoming links to the page

However, regarding point 5, there may be two problems with that point: a) there may be no links now, but if one creates a report that involves the IP, a link may not exist now, but will after the report, and b) the IPs do show up in contributions lists (also for range-contributions). Deleting such a talkpage obscures (or makes it simply invisible for non-admins) the fact that there may have been warnings placed on the IP talkpage (whether it was for spamming or POV pushing by a range of IPs), and makes the full broadness of the problem less obvious.

I would suggest to change it to:

Talk pages of anonymous users may be archived (leaving a link to the archive on the talkpage) if they meet the following criteria:

Not using any unsubstituted templates (e.g., {{SharedIPEDU}}) (the substituted part of the talkpage can still be archived)
No edits within the last year
No talk page activity within the last year
No incoming links to the page

--Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It would also help if there were some note stating the page had been archived; not everyone will think of looking at the page history.

Deleting talk pages belonging to spammers creates problems (see User talk:MZMcBride#Spam-tracking pages (permanent link) for a detailed discussion of the problems. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:57, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Regarding point (a), it's rather silly. :-) While it's of course true that the page could be linked to later on, it's equally true that the IP could edit later on or the IP could be blocked later on. So that's not particularly relevant.

Regarding point (b), in past discussions the possibility of archiving (or even blanking) the pages has been brought up. Do you have responses to the previous points made in the other discussions? (I don't particularly feel like re-typing them. ;-) In particular, the virtue of ancient warnings to an IP that very likely do not belong to the same user any longer (dynamic IPs) is unclear. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)I was about to write this on MZMcBride's talk page, but this would probably be better.

What the anti-spam project has is not a tracking system. From what I understand, it works something like this:

Someone adds a spam link to a page
You look somewhere (the page history?) to see if other users have added the same link
If its an IP address, you look at the range contribs.
You look at the talk pages of each of the IPs to see if they have been warned
Various actions are taken (blacklisting/reverting/blocking)

If someone adds the same link in a month, the process repeats itself... except, most of the steps consist of looking at information that won't change between investigations. Basically, every time a spamlink is added, the investigation has to begin again. The only thing I can think of that would be less efficient is writing down all the information and physically mailing it to all the members of the project.

As for the proposal here, this seems like an awful lot of wasted effort. I probably said this half a dozen times in the discussion that led to OLDIP, but I guess I'll say it again anyway. The vast majority of these talk pages are completely and totally useless. An archive of template warnings is going to be even more useless. Its going to double the amount of useless pages, and it takes twice the effort. Leaving the warnings causes other problems. People may see old warnings meant for someone else and act overly harsh. Mr.Z-man 22:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)This was discussed before, what it came down to is that the user behind an IP can change quickly. If the user is a spammer, then they will likely have been blocked or have an ip info template on their talkpage, which would prevent it from being deleted. So the talkpages of IPs who did not have heavy enough vandalism for a block or a sharedip template will have the page deleted, but the talkpages of long term vandals are preserved. --Terrillja _talk 22:04, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

A lot of spammers use an IP, get warned and move on to another IP. So those pages will get deleted under the current rules. In fact, I'd say that most long-term spammers only get one or two warnings per IP before moving on to another IP. It's quite possible for them to accumulate 20 warnings over 30 IPs before someone finally looks a little closer for other accounts. That's why we want to be able to see other warnings.--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:41, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Noting here (as I did already on my talk page): the deletion script now checks for certain key words. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)Well the contribs are preserved, which are the key part, all the warnings do is show that they were told to stop, you could perhaps lose any comments they left, but as far as long term vandalism, all of their contributions showing any vandalism will still be there. --Terrillja _talk 23:08, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Well my opinion is that these talk pages shouldn't be deleted at all. This is destroying valuable information that's costing the encyclopedia nothing. Why delete these IP talk pages? What does the encyclopedia gain from it, and what are people trying to hide in deleting the pages? They should be preserved to document the history of editing from the IP as this information is very valuable when it comes to fighting spam and vandalism. Themfromspace (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you read the past deletion discussions? A lot of these points were covered (kind of extensively). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Considering the shared nature of most IPs, I cannot image how 12+ month old comments on the talk page are truly relevant if the IP has not edited anything in over a year. Likewise, the concerns about spammers do not really apply here, since spammers tend to get blocked pretty quickly, and being blocked violates criteria #1 above, so that talk page would not get deleted. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Having made about 20,000 spam-removal and warning edits on en.wikipedia and >5,000 on other Wikimedia projects,^[3][4][5][6] I can tell you that:

Spammers seldom get blocked, quickly or not. Too often they don't even get warned. As of mid-2007, we were getting over 1000 external links per day, yet on average 4 to 7 accounts get blocked for spam each day.
Spammers change accounts when they get blocked. In fact, they'll often change accounts after just a warning.
If a spammer's going to ignore the first 3 warnings, there's little we can do to really stop him except blacklist his domains.
As noted multiple times already, we need to see if the spammers' earlier accounts and IPs have been warned so we know if their persistence merits blacklisting.
Since in some cases, non-Wikimedia sites are incorporating our spam blacklist in their own filters, we are careful about blacklisting a domain unless we're sure they're problematic.

Dirk Beetstra and I do much of the spam clean-up work -- can you just take us at our word that this information is useful? That or help us with some of the spam problem (we're shorthanded)? Thanks, --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:30, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Some answers:

No, it is not silly. If the pages get linked, now or later, if it is a redlink gives the impression that the editor has not been warned, blue links show that there has been communication for some reason, and it is easy to check for admins and non-admins. I'll expand on this in the next section.
The point is not that the IP is not necessery the same user anymore. But if 50 different IPs add someobscurelink.com, or edits someobscurepage with the same information, then it is very likely that one user has used all of these IPs. If that person got warned on 20 of them, then it means that it might be likely that we a) have to rangeblock, b) blacklist links, c) other methods of protecting. If 18 of those 20 talkpages get deleted, then there are only 2 (obvious) IPs warned, which would result in me having to check 48 other pages to see if they have been deleted and see if there are warnings in the deleted revisions regarding the same edit (a lot of work for admins, impossible for non-admins), which may very likely result in me not blacklisting the domain, not rangeblocking or whatever. If those 20 pages were still blue links, then at least it is only 2 clicks (for admins and non-admins) to see if there were warnings in the past, and the other 30 can be ignored.
This is not an awful waste of effort, now warning dynamic IPs is a waste of effort, as the information gets lost. Just as for the scripted deletion, archiving these pages is also very easily done by a bot. No waste of effort at all, anywhere.
This creates more work for admins, as regular editors can not check warning histories, and hence can not show the full story of the edits. If the page is un-deleted, they can help in going through talkpage histories and see if the involved IPs have been warned. Makes it for the admins less effort to just see the evidence presented, and act accordingly.
Archiving warnings and all such after some time (which can be considerably shorter than 1 year, IMHO), also results that people don't see the old warnings meant for someone else. By the way, MZMcBride also deletes IP talkpages which have a very neat, friendly, welcoming, substituted welcome message on them. I think that that would even be very nice if you encounter that on your talkpage.
Spammers don't get blocked often, especially those who change IP quickly. Also other users who use quickly changing IPs in vandalism or POV push-sprees do not get blocked, it is very difficult, and those are just the editors where this part of the problem relates to.
Spammers, POV pushers and a lot of vandals, are absolutely not stupid. I recently blocked a user, who first as an IP was warned, and when those warnings started, stopped but created an account (it only took one warning..). The account did not edit for 125 days (4 months!), and then continued with exactly the same edits. In this case it only took him one edit to earn an indef block because XLinkBot noted it to me: XLinkBot leaves on-IRC warnings for editors who are > 7 days old (its revert limit), but who have less than 250 edits (arbitrary number) .. I see regularly editors there who are way older than 7 days (2 examples from the last couple of hours: '... is 887.13 days old (limit is 7; age autoconfirmed), but has only 10 edits'; '... is 805.41 days old (limit is 7; age autoconfirmed), but has only 2 edits') .. do we realise how much work it is to find if these editors have been warned before as IPs. It is now already almost impossible to do that (my linkaddition db is about 1.5 years old, working on parsing back, for regular vandals and POV pushers all we have is page histories and range-contribution lists to go through), and deleting talkpages does not make this effort any easier.

All in all, I still argue that the pages should be archived, maybe blanked or replaced with a welcome message, but certainly NOT deleted, or at least that the pages should not be deleted when there is any form of a warning (template) on them (being for spam, coi, or whatever form of vandalism. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:01, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Now I am thinking about it (the above was just after a night of sleep). Say, I am an expert in an obscure subject, and am interested in enhancing Wikipedia. I am first editing as an IP, all non-related to POV issues, spam, coi, whatever, so no need for warnings, I'm just one of those IPs who get it. As a part of my work as an IP, I am discussing a change of guideline with some members of the project on my talkpage, and the guideline is changed accordingly (the change is noted with a link to my talkpage in the edit summary, but that is not an incoming link for my talkpage that can be seen). Unfortunately, I don't edit on any other talkpages (no signatures left there), and another editor has only mentioned the discussion somewhere else as 'On the talkpage of user:0.0.0.0 we are discussing this and that, please join us there' (without a working wikilink). Then I change my mind, I create an account and edit on. So after a year, my talkpage gets deleted, deleting the active record of the discussion.

I know, this is not a very likely scenario, but I think we have now several examples where deletion of talkpages leads to deletion of valuable information. I think that this part should be revisited. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Well as long as the user continues to contribute, then their talkpage will be kept, regardless of activity on their talkpage (see #2). If they do not continue to contribute, then after a year it will go, but I doubt anything discussed a year ago will be relevant to current events. I'm sure there could be some obscure exception, but if there is, the talkpage can be restored, and an unsubsituted template can be added.--Terrillja _talk 17:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

That's simply the nature of editing anonymously. If you edit with registering an account, you don't get to "own" your talk page. (See also: Wikipedia:Why create an account?.) This becomes especially true if you edit from a dynamic IP address and no longer are assigned that IP. That's simply the way it goes.

What I'm having trouble understanding is why you believe that these pages should be kept around indefinitely. Especially ones that use templated messages. So in 2007, IP "220.240.36.2" vandalized "Talk:High School Musical." The IP talk page was warned using TW. Now, why does that page need to stay around forever? It's one revision of a templated warning to an IP that likely doesn't belong to the same person it did in December 2007.

While we certainly could move content like that to an archive subpage, there's simply no reason to. One of the reasons the script checks for template usage is to ensure that valuable information isn't lost and work isn't duplicated. Things like {{whois}} or {{indefblock}} or whatever are all kept.

Looking at the section directly above this one, it seems pretty silly to rely on talk page warnings to determine what to do with a spammer. IPs can easily add links without being detected / warned or they can easily remove warnings from their own page.

And, above all of this, upon A. B.'s insistence, any page now containing the words "spam," "promote," or "promotion" are now skipped. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:06, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

For simple vandalism, no problem. The problem are the IP changing spammers/POV pushers and persistent vandals. Again, the point is not that there now is another editor, the point is that one changing editor has used that IP and in that time has been warned. If in 2 years the whole set of 200.43 / 200.45 talkpages are gone (a huge range of IPs which can't all be blocked), then why keep up the protection of a whole set of pages to which a long-term POV pusher and vandal has edited, a lot of the proof that the editor has been warned is for non-admins invisible. And it is not only spammers that I am worried about. And I can return exactly the same question, why delete the pages? What benefit does that give? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:55, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

It prevents IPs from seeing incredibly confusing messages not intended for them. It also gives the IPs a blank slate (tabula rasa). Most of these people don't deserve to come to the project with an entirely undeserved reputation that they vandalize. And, if it's been two years without any activity from the IPs (from any range), then what's the problem? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

That would also be true for archiving (and replace it with a small, friendly welcome message, including a message that the IP has been used before by (possibly) other editors), and as I said earlier, the welcome message which is on some of the talkpages that have been deleted is not exactly confusing, it is .. well .. welcoming, hardly 'confusing'. Abuse 2 years ago is still abuse (for that way of editing).

But I see we are not going to get to an agreement about this, you find the pages useless, I think that on certain pages important information, or just information without problems, has been deleted. But I'll leave it at this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree with all the points made by A. B. and Beetstra here, these talk pages shouldn't be deleted at all. --Hu12 (talk) 20:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

OLDIP removal

Discussion on this subject is also ongoing at WT:CSD#U4.

As per this discussion. discussions below, and at WT:CSD, I have cut the OLDIP section from WP:UP. [7] --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleting the guideline was very bold. However, there are two problems:

WP:OLDIP now doesn't point to anthing relevant;
Deletions are continuing with the above link as the summary.

I'm not sure how to resolve these issues. Just saying :) Martin^msgj 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Bold, but clearly appropriate in my opinion, and I do not feel that I am alone. If the section remains removed, WP:OLDIP should be deleted. The deletions purportedly authorised by WP:OLDIP should stop. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you're being incredibly disruptive. Please stop. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

See my response to you at WT:CSD#U4; nutshell: there does appear to be some consensus for this, but any deletion policy should be at WP:CSD, not here. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:37, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Political/Religious/Sexual Preference Content

Related to this MfD, I would like to get the ball rolling on a proposal to remove from userpages all content that expresses a political/religious/sexual/etc. view or belief. Several people, at least, have commented in support of such an action on the MfD. So I would like to know how widely held that sentiment is. So, what do you think? seresin ( ¡? ) 08:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

This has come up so many times before... And what do you mean by "etc"? Any opinion expression not related to Wikipedia? Being that it would mean the deletion of 90% of userboxes, I doubt that would fly. If on the other hand you mean only political/religious/sexual, ie. the possibly controversial stuff, or in other words, "I think the world should work this way and not that way" views, then that's a little more likely to succeed -- but only a little, since there's such a fine line dividing those from everything else. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:14, 1 Feb 2009 (UTC)

And of course, who defines these things. Sexual for instance. A user can't post on their userpage "I like sex"? Or "I'm gay"? Or "I'm straight", even? They all are sexual but who decides what's allowed and what isn't? Too broad in this context. Indeed, several people have commented in support of your proposal here, at that MFD.. but more people at the same MFD apparently have commented in keeping such userboxes. As for that particular MFD and userbox in question, I as a gay man find it offensive - but I see no reason why any user shouldn't be allowed to have it. The old saying "I may not like it or agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it". Userboxes always have been, and always will be a contentious issue. I say hold the course and handle each one on an individual basis via MFD. - ✰ALLST☆R✰ ^echo 19:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I doubt it would gain enough support but I just want to point out that I'd be entirely in favor of getting rid of all userboxes and actually forbidding all userpage content that doesn't have anything to do with Wikipedia, as I think was originally intended, including "I am gay" or "I am straight" or "I like sex". If it were all forbidden across the board, I think we'd have less userpage issues to deal with, and nothing would really be taken away from the encyclopdeia. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:30, 1 Feb 2009 (UTC)

I think we'd have less editors too. Why does Wikipedia have to be a stuffy, old library without anything controversial or individual? Seriously. - ✰ALLST☆R✰ ^echo 00:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Cause it's just not what we're here for. The people who are interested in leaving their activism elsewhere are really the most desirable editors to have here. Show me someone who doesn't care to make his opinions on the world known to all, and I'll bet 9 times out of 10 that'll be your more balanced and objective editor. I like to be creative and dramatic now and then and I know where to go for it; But here, I'd gladly relinquish my right to personal creative space if it meant cutting out a lot of annoying drama to focus on the real goal. I don't think you'd leave if you couldn't have your personal posterboard to exercise free speech... and I don't think that's much of a draw to any productive editors. This is like a work environment, with other editors being your co-workers. You need to be able to work with them with a level of professionalism, and that means leaving certain aspects of your personality at home. You wouldn't post controversial signs in your office at work, and I think the same should apply here.

Anyway it seems moot since this proposal has come up so much before, while never yielding any clear result. Maybe if we did an RfC with one of those watchlist notifications. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:15, 2 Feb 2009 (UTC)

Sure, we may be here to improve the encyclopedia, but people should have the ability to express themselves. If we remove all userpages and just have articles and talkpages, it takes all of the personal factor out of the project. And I for one would be gone if that happened. Personally, I have no problem with an occasional MfD for the userbox or userpage which pushes the rules, but flat out outlawing any non-wiki userboxes (or userpage content) is unnecessary IMO. --Terrillja _talk 04:53, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

People should have the ability to express themselves, as far as their political opinions? For what reason? It has nothing to do with anything here. You'd be gone if you didn't have your user page? Seriously? If you could continue to edit the encyclopedia and collaborate with other editors and discuss features and policies, but you just weren't allowed a personal page to let everyone know your blood type and gender, you'd have reason enough to leave? I really doubt that. Anyway I'm not actually suggesting the complete removal of userspace anyway, just the prohibition of political statements not having to do with Wikipedia. Your particular page doesn't seem to have much irrelevant content, if any. It's actually a perfect example of the kind of content people should be putting on their pages. Equazcion •✗/C • 08:07, 2 Feb 2009 (UTC)

What does it matter what other people have on their user pages if it doesn't violate the rules? User boxes are optional, so anyone who doesn't like them certainly doesn't have to have one (or fifty). They can be avoided by simply not clicking to view other people's user pages (if one gets particularly upset because of the mere presence of any user box, that's not a bad idea) or even by simply scrolling down to the "relevant" (subjective) information. Or to put it simply- don't like them? Don't have one! I imagine that you will never encounter most of the user pages on Wikipedia, yet would regulate them all because of your obviously strong feelings against them.Gotmywaderson (talk) 20:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way, polemic statements are already prohibited by WP:UP#NOT, and have been for a long time. I guess that's just never been enforced? I suppose the real question is whether or not to remove it from the guideline now, since it doesn't seem to agree with how Wikipedia actually operates. Equazcion •✗/C • 08:28, 2 Feb 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think it very helpful that people with a strong POV say so. It can clarify discussion when people are honest about their concerns. DGG (talk) 22:57, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
The userbox stuff is a very old discussion, but my usual position is, I think user page content expressing a political, religious, or sexual preference serve a variety of positive purposes: declaring biases, community building, helping to organize Wikiprojects, and helping to differentiate and personalize users, so they they seem more like people. I would strongly oppose any motion to prohibit this content, especially on such dubious grounds as that it is "distracting." Dcoetzee 00:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

We are not all precisely the same -- and indications that we are not the same should not be considered disruptive -- rather it can enable us to know views of others without becoming Sherlocks looking at past edits. Userpages are, in fact, a tool enabling better communication in that sense. Collect (talk) 01:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review regarding indefinite hosting clause

There is a deletion review going on at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 February 4#User:Lady Aleena/Television/Crossovers that could have far reaching consequences for this guideline if endorsed as multiple admins and users are essentially admitting they are choosing to ignore the clause of the policy which does not allow for indefinite hosting of content in userspace and arguing that users should be allowed to keep articles in their userspace indefinitely even if such articles would immediately be deleted in a AfD discussion. If this deletion review is endorsed, it will essentially mean that userspace is, in most cases, untouchable. Thought I'd let anyone who was interested in participating one way or the other know. Redfarmer (talk) 05:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, the thing is what is not indefinite? Someone might have a userfied article for years and then actually get around to improving and restoring it. The whole point of having userfied articles is to allow editors to more leisurely work on them. Some may see "not indefinite" as months, others weeks, other years, etc. It is thus something subjectively interpreted. As long as editors have stated objectives for their userfied articles and clear evidence of plans to work on them, and the articles don't fail copy vio, libel, or hoax issues, then it's really no big deal. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 05:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The guideline clearly says, "While userpages and subpages can be used as a development ground for generating new content, this space is not intended to indefinitely archive your preferred version of disputed or previously deleted content or indefinitely archive permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia. In other words, Wikipedia is not a free web host. Private copies of pages that are being used solely for long-term archival purposes may be subject to deletion." That is the complete opposite of what you are saying. Redfarmer (talk) 06:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that one editor's definition of "long-term" is likely not the same as others. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 06:29, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

But the point is: long term indicates there IS a time limit. Redfarmer (talk) 06:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

What the time limit is arbitrary and debateable. To me "long-term" is say a few decades and yes I am serious. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 06:36, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Considering the fact that the project hasn't been around a decade yet, isn't it unreasonable to assume that the people who wrote this draft intended a decade to be the time limit? Redfarmer (talk) 14:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

No, because don't we intend or hope for the project to be around for as long as possible? Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 20:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete all sections that mention any time limits. Based on the "trend of opinion" at numerous MFD's "consensus" shows most editors choose to ivoke the WP:IAR spin off of "Wikiepedia has no time limits" when it comes to mainspace articles on user subpages. It is clearly pointless to have such a guideline when it is not used. it is possible that a majority find is valid however the vocal "consensus" that participates in deletion discussions ignore it thus also using the concept that "silence implies support". The entire section found at "Copies of other pages" should be removed. Thank you. Soundvisions1 (talk) 12:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Comment Taking into account that DRV has not been closed yet, any RFC is premature. This is looks like forum shopping. Ruslik (talk) 14:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- It's not intended to be forum shopping. As I said in the RFC summary, this is to gauge consensus on the guideline. If the new consensus is there is no time limit, we will remove those words from the guideline. This RFC is sparked by the DRV but not an attempt to circumvent it. Redfarmer (talk) 14:33, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- Also, for the record, I am not necessarily looking at this RfC for an opinion I like as the guideline for forum shopping suggests. I'm so tired of it all at this point I just want to gauge consensus, rewrite the guideline, and go back to my little corner. Frankly I don't care anymore if this RfC decides there is no time limit; I've just expended way too much energy over this in the DRV than I should have. Also, I've come to accept that the deletion of this page has a snowball's chance in hell at this point so it's useless to continue debating whether the page should be deleted or not and decide what the guideline should be instead. Redfarmer (talk) 14:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I saw this in {{cent}}. "If this deletion review is endorsed, it will essentially mean that userspace is, in most cases, untouchable." That DRV is about one page. Why do you think it has "far reaching consequences"? I don't know why you think it applies to all of userspace. --Pixelface (talk) 19:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Reply to Pixelface: While I can't speak for Redfarmer I can speak for myself. This has been building up for a while and more and more I see editors simply come into deletion discussions and vote "keep" with no real reason. I can remember one user who, when I first noticed them, had seemingly cut and pasted "keep: Not doing any harm" over and over again in almost every MfD. Clearly a closing admin should see that that the user has made a valid opinion but used a non-argument, because it says nothing about what policy or guideline supports it. Likewise the closing admin would have no way of knowing that this same user has posted the exact same opinion and argument at several other deletion discussions with unrelated topics. By assuming good faith I can feel the closing admin would "ignore" that users opinion as it is a non-argument, that is unless the nom itself was made about something that was actually doing harm. (Nom: "My eyes started bleeding when I read this article - it needs to go" User: "Keep: it is doing no harm") I have raised the issue of "counting votes" before and been met with "Assume good faith, not all closing admins count votes" but at this particular MfD it struck me as odd that only a few of the "keep" opinions actually discussed the overall article, it's history or the users comments. Comments made at the MfD such as "It's not meant to be part of the encyclopedia yet" and "the very fact that it is in userspace means it is not ready...AfD it when it's an article" indicate opinons that anything in userspace can never be touched because - well, it is not on mainspace, and that goes against Policy and this guideline. There is no indication in the section we are discussing that anything in userspace is off limits for deletion - it explicitly says just the opposite. When I saw the closing admins comments of simply "The result of this Discussion was keep" I went to the admin and, very much assuming good faith, asked them to re-open in order to allow the users who voiced keep to reply to the "how long" questions asked by Redfarmer and myself. (I can not say for sure but it appeared the first "how long" was a direct question to a "keep" opinion that contained an argument of letting the article "bake for a bit". This was also one of the only keeps that actually indicated the Editor had looked at the article and the related discussions and offered any real "warning" - as "keep" "but"...) I also asked if the admin could expand their summary and asked some very specific questions about the discussion. I was answered with no direct answer but an accusation that I did not know what deletion discussions were for. I was also informed that the "votes" were 8 "keeps" and only 3 "deletes" there fore it was a "keep". Further I was told that "all" arguments were valid and "rather persuasive" and that questions about "how long" were too vague to be part of discussion. In saying this it raised my "assume good faith" warning level because it seemed to imply that "keep" arguments such as "I'd be inclined to follow WP:TIMELIMIT" and "I consider this to be a breach of one's privacy" were fine, and not in "violation" of the WP:DGFA, which the closing admin said they followed. So wanting to make sure I was not misunderstanding, I again asked the same specific questions again but also asked to show what policy or guideline backed some of the more wild arguments. I also reminded the admin of what the WP:DGFA said, including "Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted." I also asked why "how long" was "vague" in the context of the MfD discussion. Rather than answer anything directly I was told, again, that "all keeps had strong arguments behind them", reminded that I had "lost" and told, bluntly, "If you think that opinions of two editors+nominator constitute a consensus to delete (despite serious objections from 8 other editors) you can try your luck on DRV. Otherwise this discussion is meaningless". So I did, although it was not ever based on "delete" in my case. I think at the DRV is where the real issues started to show. I basically restated the exact same concerns I had asked the closing admin about but also added on a question to see if the amdin really did follow the WP:DGFA and re-stated I was not asking for to overturn the "keep" but to be re-open briefly in order to allow the valid "how long" questions to be answered. The closing admin made the first response, again ignoring the entire reason for the DRV, and simply responded that they counted the votes and it was 8 "keep" and 3 "delete". And it has grown from there with several people chiming in that there is no guideline or policy such as is being discussed right here, right now. I even went back and made an "in a nutshell" bold header of what needed to be addressed. Still - people ignore it and simply say "There is no timeline" or "It does not violate any policy" or "doing no harm". Only one editor has actually responded directly to the "privacy" argument but asked what it had to do with anything...and, again, this is a concern. The closing admin made a head count and in doing so counted "votes" that are not based in any policy or guideline. As one of the main issues was this guideline, which is a direct definition of the WP:NOT#WEBHOST Policy (also see WP:NOTWEBHOST subsection of the same Policy that sends people here for "further information") Policy, it does have "far reaching consequences". The discussion below is backing up the "userspace is off limits for MfD" concept. Outside of blatant advertising, copyvios, non-free image galleries and possible userfication where time limits may, or may not depending on this outcome, be imposed anything goes, for however long the user decides to keep it. Soundvisions1 (talk) 21:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The page in question has been undeleted, the apparent closure is that user pages do not have to conform to policies and guidelines if they do not harm the encyclopedia. The responses basically say that the DELREV is an application of IAR. That fact basically means that the users involved disagree with the policy. Therefore, should this policy be reformulated? WP:EM is often used as a keep justification at MFD, that deleting userspace content only scares off editors. What I see at MFD and DELREV is that the consensus is for this:

A user's userspace is largly their own domain.
Deleting those pages isn't helpful at all.
There is nothing wrong with storing data if there's even the slightest chance of use.

Just an observation--Ipatrol (talk) 14:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Question to consider here:

How long should a page intended to eventually be moved to the encyclopedia be allowed to sit in userspace (the indefinite hosting clause) before it is in violation of this clause? Should there be a time limit on how long users are permitted to keep something that otherwise violates WP policies in their userspace before it is considered hosting?

As far as I'm concerned people can have any old rubbish sitting around in their user space, provided it's not offensive or illegal or being misused (e.g. being advertised elsewhere on the Web). Some day the devs might decide to clean out the servers by chucking out user pages belonging to defunct users, but that's not our problem at the moment.--Kotniski (talk) 15:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I say remove the time limit statement. Only things that are advertising, illegal, etc should be removed, and in other cases not so clear, there should be a good consensus from the community to remove the content from the userpage. It's common that people leave works in progress on a userpage for long periods of time and there's no good reason to say "Sorry, you can't edit this here anymore". --Bill ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I say who cares. These will be judged on a case by case basis. This whole issue is being presented as a potentially harmful clause in a contract, and that's not what Wikipedia policies are. We don't need to be careful about the language we use in them lest someone is able to get away with something undesirable in the future due to a technicality. We have no technicalities here. If it seems a page has been around a long time with no attention paid to it and no serious objections raised, it'll be removed no matter what the policy says. Similarly if something's been around a while and the author really wants to keep it around, he need only ask, again despite what's in the policy. It's all friendly here; we're not a court system. We don't need to worry about things like this. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:49, 5 Feb 2009 (UTC)
- The issue is not that it is felt this clause is harmful. Quite the contrary, the clause is being completely ignored by admins and users. Most won't even acknowledge a simple "it exists." Instead, what is being advocated is complete WP:NOTIMELIMIT, i.e. there is never a time limit on things in the userspace, and they're untouchable in most cases. This group is not even pretending to acknowledge this clause even exists. Redfarmer (talk) 00:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
  - Don't wish to be rude, but aren't you taking this issue just a little bit too seriously? Does it really matter? Doesn't WP have more important problems to be solving?--Kotniski (talk) 09:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
    - If the clause exists, it should be acknowledged and enforced. If consensus has changed, the clause should change with consensus. That is the purpose of the RfC. The fact that a certain group of admins are so ill informed that they think this clause does not exist and that userspace has WP:NOTIMELIMIT suggests consensus has changed. Redfarmer (talk) 09:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I would say five years. I think the vast majority of wikipedians don't last longer than three years. It's kinda like { {PD-OLD}}, life of a wikipedia plus 2 years. Seriously, I've seen this at various XfDs, but haven't really understood what it's hurting (barring copyvios, etc.). My workspace history has the remnants of several articles deemed unsuitable for WP, but I don' think it needs oversighting. Every once in a while I still think about fixing one of them up, and I just might. The problem is I can't remember them, because of the rule of not letting them sit around as an artilce. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I've not yet read a valid or convincing reason to describe why effectuating such a time limit as this would be to anyone's advantage. That which does no injury need be done no injury, in my mind. Unless the content has legal consequences or is outside Wikipedia's scope or its policy, there is no such injury. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps there should be more nuance. There really shouldn't be a limit on random drafts, but perhaps we should be a little stricter with previously deleted material to also confirm with the idea we shouldn't be indefinitely hosting deleted material that isn't being worked upon. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
One (1) Hubble time. Note that I'm biased, as a lot of crap hangs around my userspace for quite a while. I started User:WilyD/Amalgamation of Toronto in 2006, haven't worked on it since 2007, but I don't think there'd be any sense in deleting it. I'll get to it when I have time. Wily D 15:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
This discussion just came to my attention via a thread at WT:NOT (here). IMO, if there is, or is proposed to be, a specific time limit on how long a user can keep a draft in her or his userspace, it's excessive instruction creep. ... Kenosis (talk) 16:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Remove the time limit clause, strengthen the clause about "use in the encyclopedia". As we have said above, people can have anything they want in their userspace, so long as it doesn't run afoul of serious problems like copyvio/G10/spam/etc.. BUT, we do have a problem of people just dropping deleted articles in their userpace because they want them "on wikipedia". The easiest examples are the spam ones, but there are other ones which don't trigger an immediate tripwire like that. As long as there is some possibility for reasonable belief that the page will come back to the encyclopedia or the page serves some function for the user or other users (maybe it was a bibliography page or something like that), we should be fine with the page. If not, we should think about asking the user to U1 it or we should MfD it. Obviously, this whole process should respect the fact that userspace should be as hands off as possible. Scouring user sub-pages looking for this kind of stuff should be discouraged. Protonk (talk) 16:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
No time limit; c.f. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Sceptre/Mexican girl (which is now at User:Sceptre/workspace/Four Winds); there is no deadline, especially for userspace drafts. Sceptre ^(talk) 19:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
No time limit. It doesn't hurt anyone, doesn't disrupt the site, - leave it alone. NVO (talk) 20:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Question for the above: is a distinction drawn, WRT this dicussion, between original content in the processes of becoming an article, and userfied copies of deleted articles/other versions of currently existing articles? seresin ( ¡? ) 06:37, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
As Protonk said, "Remove the time limit clause, strengthen the clause about "use in the encyclopedia" ". If there is potential for an article, that's enough. The problem is the ones where there isn't. It is very useful to have this as a safety hatch at AfD. DGG (talk) 22:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Endorse time limits but application should be guided by "do what's best for the project." I would say anything done by an editor who hasn't logged in in over a year is game for deletion, with a note on their talk page saying it can be restored on request. I'd even go so far as to make this a bot-action. For active users, I would say after 6 months of no significant activity, give the user a notice on his talk page and encourage him to db-author or db-user it. Repeat the notice every 30 days. Basically, friendly-annoy the user into improving or deleting the article. After a year of no significant action, send it to MFD or, if the editor is not editing during the MFD, summarily delete it saying it can be restored on request at which time it will go back to MFD if there is no immediate effort to improve it. If at any time a user says "hold on, I'm in the middle of exams, I'll get to it next month" then assume good faith and don't take action until they've had a chance to live up to their word. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Endorse no time limit. As Redfarmer acknowledges, this is the de facto standard in any event. What I look for in a decision to delete such a page is whether there is an attempt - even an excruciatingly slow one - to improve the encyclopedia. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 18:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm suspicious that I actually wrote those clauses way back in the day. The intended emphasis was on deleted content, disputed versions, and other things where hosting it in the main space would be inappropriate. In other words, userspace is not a backdoor for hosting content that violates Wikipedia policies, though such content might live there on a temporary basis while people work to make it policy compliant. Beyond that, I don't think there needs to be any urgency in dealing with uncontroversial drafts and the like though. Dragons flight (talk) 19:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Oppose time limit - unless it's a copyvio, covered by some CSD, or used for the purpose of disruption - I see no reason for limiting the time. If it has some potential for improving the encyclopedia, we don't want to delete it even if the user has forgotten about it but will eventually remember it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Endorse time limit: I think a year would be very generous, but would support something shorter. A fair time limit would actually help make sure that it eventually *does* get back to the mainspace, because it would provide a motivation. Even better than a flat time limit would be something dynamic -- something based on effort, with generous allowances for extensions. This isn't a deadline so much as the expiration of a good faith belief, like the wife of a MIA soldier who eventually realizes her husband is never coming home. Randomran (talk) 17:08, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a question: whats the goal? Just to scrub old junk that isn't being worked toward the encyclopedia main space, or to keep viewers from coming across old junk that's in limbo? If it's the latter, I'd endorse some sane time limit (a year?) and a mandatory template like Template:Revamping Content or something, which would include {{NOINDEX}} by default; if it's the former, just set a blanket NOINDEX on all User: and User talk: pages. rootology (C)(T) 06:47, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- I would say it is a mixture of both positions. A reader with no knowledge of how Wikipedia works can easily come across "articles" like those in the deletion review referenced, especially since the user advertised for help on various talk pages. This could give a user the impression that these are the standards we set for articles. I like your idea for the template. Redfarmer (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
I am generally against any specific time limits. Users should be a allowed to work on article content in the user space at their own pace, and even if it is very slow, it is still possibly of benefit to Wikipedia in the long run. Copyvio/spam/BLP violations/web hosting and similar should obviously dealt with separately when it arises. As for WP:NOTIMELIMIT, as I have pointed out at WT:NOTIMELIMIT, this essay was primarily written for issues of the main space, not much thought was given for the user space. Though the concepts it gives do, I think, hold some relevance here. Camaron | Chris (talk) 14:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Keep wording as it is: There shouldn't be a specific time limit, but User pages show up in google searches, and should not be used as a way to permanently host content forks that better push a POV. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure many people like that wikipedia is getting that extra traffic making it number 8 site in the world. it can be disabled with 'noindex,nofollow' instruction in html meta tag, as is done with many other pages. 212.200.241.153 (talk) 12:43, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

COMMENT. having a time limit is silly. one can make few edits just before 'expiration', and therefore it is extended. 212.200.241.153 (talk) 12:40, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Endorse some time limit. A year would be fine; it shouldn't take anyone longer than that to improve an article to the stage where it can be allowed in mainspace. Userfying articles is supposed to be a temporary procedure; I agree with the policy that uesrfied articles should not be kept around indefinitely. After all, when an article is deleted, that's a sign that we don't really want the content on Wikipedia (unless rewritten to meet our guidelines); keeping it in userspace indefinitely seems to contradict that. Robofish (talk) 13:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Support, but a year isn't long enough. - Pointillist (talk) 09:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Endorse a time limit - a year in userspace, perhaps six months with no edits? I'd have general sandboxes excluded. Bearian (talk) 23:16, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Point to ponder

Google indexes pages in User space, and often prioritises them fairly highly. If we're going to revise that section, what should we do about POV-forks and similar content hosted in user space?

Discuss. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

What? Why should Google index userspace? Talk: and User: should have a robot.txt to exclude spiders from indexing them. 199.125.109.119 (talk) 00:23, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

yep, quite easy to modify! [8] 212.200.241.153 (talk) 12:44, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I recommend that we leave people's userspace alone, and get back to doing something that might have some vague possibility of being useful. This is all useless bureaucracy. — Werdna • talk 06:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Google should not be indexing user pages. Permitting Google to index (and what's worse, cache) pages containing incomplete drafts of material about living persons is bad practice and exposes the foundation to unnecessary legal risk. - Pointillist (talk) 09:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

MfD cases re: WP:NONCON

from above:
::::I've tagged some pages from speedy deletion. Any declines, I brought to MFD. Does that sound reasonable? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a very reasonable approach. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is a reasonable approach, is not WP:POINT, and could be very informative for this debate. However, MZMcBride, why are you confusing matters by nominating userpages of users who have edited in the last year? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

MZMcBride, it looks like you application of your criteria is sloppy and generates a lot of false positives. It doesn't look like you should be trusted with the power to unilaterally delete. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Whoa, leave me out of this. Which false positives are you talking about? --MZMcBride (talk) 08:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

False positives: Your criterion "The user hasn't edited in the last year". User:Belsy, for example, has edited in the last year.
False positives, in my opinion: Not only do I disagree with your CSD tagging, that mutliple cases are not and should not be speediable, but some of them I even think should be kept at MfD, at least "for now", anyway. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I've given my opinions on your MfDs. Admittedly, I err towards keeping. I'm hoping that plenty of others weigh in with their opinions. Having seeded the MfDs with my opinions, I try to leave them alone. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

For convenience I am putting a list of the MFDs open at this time. Martin^msgj 09:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Miscellany for deletion/User:SI461AN
Miscellany for deletion/User:Belsy
Miscellany for deletion/User:ChileProg
Miscellany for deletion/User:Vokcan
Miscellany for deletion/User:KValavanis
Miscellany for deletion/User:Remko Nieuwman
~~Miscellany for deletion/User:AlmightyMike~~ Speedy deleted as copyright violation.
Miscellany for deletion/User:Apteka
~~Miscellany for deletion/User:Wholespear~~ Speedy deleted as copyright violation.
Miscellany for deletion/User:Richard Giberti
Miscellany for deletion/User:Esan hanzi100
Miscellany for deletion/User:Stephen Mark Andrew Johnson

These MfDs are proving to be an interesting exercise in how the community views different sorts of non-contributing users' pages. I encourage anyone considering WP:NONCON -- whether they lean pro or con -- to look over them. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Living in Lake Chapala Mexico

Has anyone written an article on Lake Chapala, Mexico. I found some good information on http://www.livinglakechapala.com but i wanted to be sure it was on wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nwtconner (talk • contribs) 19:22, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the Lake Chapala article? --Kralizec! (talk) 20:39, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Stating a dislike for nations

A question. There is a user (whom I will not name for the time being) who, on his user page, has a subsection for "countries I do not like". He lists them, and adds a map with those countries highlighted in red, stating that he will never go there. There are fourteen such countries, from various parts of the world (ranging from Mongolia to Iran, France, Israel, Pakistan and others). I don't see what stating his xenophobic dislike for millions of people he's never met contributes to the encyclopedia. Before I ask him to kindly remove his rather pointless insult to entire countries, I'd like to know whether or not such content is considered permissible. Thank you. 83.199.238.99 (talk) 21:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

It sounds as though it might be inflammatory and divisive, but I'd like to see the page before making a judgement. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:25, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

As per MSGJ, but in general terms, we don't want lots and lots of very specific rules. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The page is here (at the bottom, plus the map a little higher up). It's not highly inflammatory, but it is clearly xenophobic, targetting specific nations. If you think it's permissible, I'll leave it be; if not, I'll contact him about it, and request he remove the objectionable parts. 82.121.226.70 (talk) 16:24, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh well. I don't see it as xenophobic (he lists no reasons for his dislike), from the list of those it looks more like a polictical statement, and there are three countries on the list where I currently wouldn't want to go either, purely for pragmatic reasons.
I wouldn't make a fuss out of it, but you can certainly ask him to clarify his reasons, so that it won't be misunderstood. --Amalthea 16:44, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't look xenophobic or inflammatory to me. It's not necessarily insulting to people if somebody doesn't like a place, and this user isn't making any specific insults to the countries, simply stating that they do not like them and will never go there. --Bill ^{(talk|contribs)} 17:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

He wants to go to UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, but not France. There is no issue. No clearly xenophobic, and xenophobia is not a crime. Objecting would be more inflammatory. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

"Objecting would be more inflammatory"? You're going to have to explain that, please, because it's not making sense to me. And no, "xenophobia is not a crime", but most rational people would agree that it's pretty damn distasteful. The question I asked was whether xenophobic statements on user pages were permissible on Wikipedia, not whether it was "a crime". My question is not whether he is entitled to have such despicable views (he is), but whether they're acceptable in the user space of the Wikipedia website, where they're associated with Wikipedia. Amalthea is correct that the reason for the user's xenophobia is probably political (his dislike for Israel, Iran and France, for example). Although, in the absence of a stated reason for his dislike for, say, Pakistan, I can't help but wonder about racial issues. That's the problem when you say dislike an entire country, but you don't say why. Regarding France, the motive of his dislike is made pretty clear by his edits to various articles, where he consistently brings up the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Not that he is necessarily introducing bias into articles, but the combination of his (factual and no doubt valid) edits with his xenophobia on his user page leave me discomforted and a little worried. Should we be encouraging someone who makes edits on France-related topics to openly say, on his user page, that he "doesn't like" the country he's making edits about? Last point: He has created and uploaded onto Wikipedia a map in which he highlights those countries in red. Based on what's been said, I'm assuming that's deemed permissible, but I would like to point out that Wikipedia now has a file, amongst its other map files, the sole purpose of which is for a user to indicate his likes and dislikes about countries. To conclude, given the views that have just been expressed, should I/we leave it be, or should I/we ask him to clarify his reasons (as suggested)? Thank you all for your replies, views and comments. 82.121.226.97 (talk) 16:09, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

To be honest 82.121, I think you may be making too much of this. User:Taifarious1 (and I think it is probably time we told them that this discussion is happening) is expressing a lack of desire to go to a country and not a hatred of all people from that country. There are places in this world where I have no interest in going, and while I don't plan to write about this on my user page, to describe me as xenophobic would be wildly inaccurate. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually 82...97 has a valid point, and nothing to do with xenophobia per se. If a user has a clear prejudice against a subject (no reason given here, just that he "does not like" some countries), then it is a kind of conflict of interest for him to edit articles on or related to that subject. pablo_hablo. 16:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that the user should be notified. pablo_hablo. 16:32, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The user should be judged on their edits alone. Liking and disliking things should not be seen as a conflict of interest as these are the topics that most people edit on Wikipedia. I expect if the user is making POV edits to articles, whether or not the statements are on their userpage would have no effect on it. --Bill ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Disagree that xenophobia is “pretty damn distasteful”. Xenophobia is a characteristic of the individual, and you shouldn’t vilify people for their admissions of personal weakness. The question of “xenophobic statements” depends on the nature of the statements. Introverted statements are OK. “I dislike France and would never go there” is a statement about me, and is OK. “France is despicable and you should never go there” an attack on France is not OK. Statements of opinion (xenophobic or otherwise) are welcome as POV declarations, and I agree that having made the declaration, some adherence to WP:COI is required. People making measured POV declarations is probably better than not making them, and much better than people pretending to themselves that they have no POV. The map referred to could be an issue. It may be suitable for explaining himself, but it may go beyond what I call a “measured POV declaration”. If the map is solely for his explanatory subpage, then I’d leave it alone. I don’t see that this user has attacked anyone. However, the objection to his personal opinions and self-descriptions could be ill-perceived. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Lol. This is rather humorous, Can I just say, I do not hate anyone, anywhere. Just because I dislike a country does not mean I hate it, and especially the people there, anyone who assumes that is mistaken and clearly overreacting for whatever reason that may be. Are people not allowed to not like things in these days without being labelled xenophobic, elitist or racist?? I am sure the people in the countries I have no desire to go to are very nice, there are nice people everywhere in the world, probably 99.99% of the world is nice, but there are some places that hold no desire for me whatsoever, Israel, well in this current climate with is confrontation with Palestine I dont think many people will be swanning there for a holiday any time soon, I never stated that "i have everyone in Israel and so I will never go there ever ever ever", dont be daft, I dont see what the big deal is anyway. I dont like France purely because they decided to blow up a ship in Auckland Harbour in the 80's, how many people in the world dont like Afghanistan?? Liking is not the same as hating. Get a grip people Taifar ious1 03:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Update* I have changed it for those of you who think that I am some xenophobic psychopath that goes round race-bashing French people in the park in my spare time. I don't understand the issue here, although I may be a little bias here, but even though I have stated I do not like France, I wrote the article about Franco-New Zealand relations, no one has had a problem with that, same with Israel-New Zealand relations, its clearly objective and unbiased. Lets get a little perspective here people, if some Joe Blow living in Brazil says he doesnt like Chevrolet cars, goes that mean he hates Americans and hes a xenophobe?? Really, come on. . . Taifar ious1 03:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Dream Focus

Is this an appropriate use for a user page? It seems like a lengthy diatribe/attack piece on "deletionists", which seems to go against the not section #10 "Material that can be viewed as attacking other editors, including the recording of perceived flaws. The compilation of factual evidence (diffs) in user subpages, for purposes such as preparing for a dispute resolution process, is permitted provided the dispute resolution process is started in a timely manner. Users should not maintain in public view negative information on others without very good reason.". However, it could also seem to fall under the what is allowed "opinions about Wikipedia...your (constructive) opinions on how certain Wikipedia articles or policies should be changed". I guess I'm wondering, where is the line? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 15:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

First off, I'm surprised that someone who accuses others of stalking all the time, has found her way to my user page. Recent articles AnmaFinotera nominated for deletion, were voted Keep: Iou Kuroda Comparison of GIS software list of all of her nominations. I'm curious if that's her reason for going after me. That is the usual pattern she seems to have followed in the past. Please state EXACTLY what part you find inappropriate, and why. If I want to list what I believe is wrong with wikipedia, and how the policies should be changed, I am allowed to do so. Dream Focus 15:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Um, your user page is on my watchlist because of previous interactions, obviously. And my AfDing articles have nothing to do with anything here. I voiced a valid concern, which obviously others share as you were recently requested to remove personal attacks from your user page by someone else. I didn't request it be deleted as a personal attack, I simply asked does your user page cross the line. I think it does, but the guideline isn't completely clear. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The complaint was from my wording at one point, which sounded like an insult, when it wasn't meant to be, we working through that, I editing it to be more clear, and both of us satisfied with the results. That one incident doesn't mean others share your concern. You have posted before, although I forget where exactly, your claim that my user page was being used as an attack page against deletionists. I believe I am well within my rights to complain about people who nominate anything for deletion, simply because they don't like it, or believe others they are trying to impress won't like it, delete 90% of an article because they consider it fancruft, etc. I am curious is to read the opinions others have on this subject though. Dream Focus 17:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to ask why you didn't contact me about this page? Fortunately some other editor contacted me and posted a link. Also, does my complaint about your actions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dream_Focus#Merge_often_means_Delete.2C_with_nothing_at_all_merged have anything to do with your decision to complain here? I did not mention your name, simply stated I thought it horrible that when people voted merge in an AFD, it ends up as a delete, and that when people try to add in information from the merge, others just delete it as being improper. Dream Focus 17:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I realise that this is somewhat stale now, but having read the user page in question I think it is pure trollery (thus responding to it may only make the situation worse I suppose); whether trolling is an acceptable use of a user page I don't know. pablo_hablo. 22:43, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no trolling. I state my viewpoints, clear and honestly. I write what I perceive around me. If you have a specific example, please post it. Dream Focus 23:08, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Dream Focus is an appropriate use for a user page. It is, in fact, an excellent user page. It tells you about the user, with strict relevence to wikipedia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

It certainly does. pablo_hablo. 08:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

On quotations

Recently an issue arose over whether it's okay for users to include long quotations from non-free works on their user page. I added a section at Wikipedia:Quotations#Quotations_and_fair_use about the general issue; here's what I put about user pages:

A special case is the use of quotations purely for interest or decorative purposes on user pages. By consensus such quotations are acceptable as long as they are limited in extent, particularly if they comment on the attitudes of the user in question; but because the claim of fair use is weaker, the restrictions on extent must be more strictly enforced.

Does this represent consensus? If so, could we include a gentle reminder here about overlong quotations? Thanks. Dcoetzee 19:58, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy with this wording. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:44, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-contributors

Following the thread above, here's a specific proposal. Any user page where:

There are no non-deleted edits in a namespace other than User:
The user hasn't edited in the last year
The page doesn't indicate that the user is a sock account or a alternate (testing) account

The page can be deleted citing WP:NONCON, a redirect that would point to this guideline.

The reasons for deleting these (mostly test and spam pages) are outlined here.

This is only talking about users with 0 non-deleted contributions outside the user space.

Below are some sample pages. Not all of these would be deleted. Please feel free to review them and comment about them.

--MZMcBride (talk) 22:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd support the idea, but may I add one idea? That, just for the sake of due process (so to speak), we leave a warning on the user's talk page first or maybe even the Special:EmailUser function. Or would that be a waste of time if they had 0 non-userspace edits? Oh and did you mean WP:NCON? Bsimmons666 (talk) 23:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:NCON points at a style guideline for article titles. I think he meant WP:NONCON in the sense of Non-Contributing editors. MBisanz ^talk 00:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Whoops. Bsimmons666 (talk) 00:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I meant WP:NONCON (not yet created). I don't see any real purpose in leaving the people a message, it just seems like it would needlessly clutter a lot of talk pages (and create a whole lot of new ones). E-mailing obviously requires the user to have a valid e-mail set... --MZMcBride (talk) 00:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ohhh, I got it. And yeah, the concern that it would create new talk pages is probably the best argument against my idea. Bsimmons666 (talk) 00:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

MZMcBride,

I would not include the main Userpage itself as deletable. You must allow for reader-only accounts, and for people who may be just extremely slow to getting around to actually contributing. Of course, the userpage of a non-productive-contributor might be subjected to a size or activity limitation.

I support clarifying the amount of material that a non-contributor may have in their userspace. At MfD, I usually support delete or the nicer blank in the first instance when their userspace contributions far exceed useful contributions. Your criteria fall well beneath this, and so I would obviously support these additions to WP:UP.

You go further, I think, in suggesting that pages meeting your criteria be speediable. I would support this for user subpages, and maybe for the userpage itself if it were being used, obviously and excessively, for non-productive purposes, even allowing for learning purposes. Are you are proposing a new WP:CSD#U4 “a non-contributor’s blatant abuse of WP:NOTWEBHOST”? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Not all deletions must be codified at WP:CSD, though it is possible to do so, if necessary. I'm suggesting something similar to WP:OLDIP (in that it would be linked from the deletion summary and provide more explanation on a page like this one).

One important point to make is that this isn't a case where the user space contributions exceed useful contributions. I'm only discussing cases where there are no useful contributions ("useful" being non-user space) at all. Previous MFDs have supported deleting these pages (I did a few test rounds a while ago).

I suppose it's also important to ask: if an account is being used to only read the project, why would it need a user page at all? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a case for codifying a new CSD. I think we should err on the side of being nice, especially where is costs little. WP:CSD#U4 should be linked to any such speedy deletion, and the explanation should explain the problem. I’d like to see the WP:CSD#U4 explanation point also to Wikipedia:Alternative outlets.

I don’t think these Userspace play page deletions should ever be characterised as housekeeping – that would be too patronising to the user. I don’t think that any other CSD criteria fits, and I don’t think there is much a downside to creating a #U4. Are many play pages, that your consider speediable, found outside userspace?

A reader account doesn’t *need* a userpage, but I’d think that a reader account with a userpage that says “My name is … and I’m from …” is OK, that the user is one step away from contributing, and that deletion would not be a positive action. Aren’t new users encouraged to create a userpage? I imagine a user having put a toe in water, and then seeing the toe bitten off. You’ve specified a year of non-editing, which is a long time, largely mitigating my concern.

Subpages, on the other hand, cause me less worry. Creation of a subpage requires at least a passing familiarity with how the wiki works. Someone playing games in their subpages is unlikely to be a timid almost-contributor. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking through your examples of people you think should be deleted. User:Jackokring has his page there, linking to an article about him, but apparently never doing anything else. Just joined the wikipedia after an article about him was made. He isn't spamming any products, nor using his space for anything else inappropriate. So why bother him? Why bother anyone at all, unless they are harming someone? User:Holger has nothing but a link to his website, but perhaps he just made a page, and didn't have anything else to say. He may not have made it specifically for spamming reasons. So a warning would be in order, or a polite question on his talk page asking him if why he did that. User:Canbcan has the name of a movie on his page, and nothing more. When you Google for that name, and the word "wikipedia", his user page is the first thing that pops up. Did he do that on purpose? Or was he just testing things out, and typed in the name of a movie, which has its own article, and that the reason he decided to register an account? Once again, we need to find his motive, get some feedback from some of these people, before deciding anything. Dream Focus 02:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, ultimately user pages have a specific purpose. They provide more information about an editor (think about how you reach the pages, mostly from page histories or talk page posts). So if a user isn't editing, what purpose is the user page serving? Identification is one purpose (for sock puppet taggings). I don't think 'playing psychologist' and trying to figure out why some of these pages is particularly productive or necessary.... --MZMcBride (talk) 02:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Additional note: looking at one of the examples you cited, User:Canbcan register an account in 2002, made a user page with a few words and hasn't returned in nearly seven years. Is there a reason to keep pages like that indefinitely? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

For the sample pages I looked at, I would say NO, they are not speediable. At MfD, I would say Keep, blank or append with Template:NOINDEX, depending on whether I find them innocuous, somehow bothersome, or conceivably serving an advertising purpose. These pages may serve no purpose, but worrying about them is a waste of time, and the damage of deleting a false postive easily outweighs any benefit of deleting them. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:19, 2 March 2009 (UTC) Template:NOINDEX

What's the purpose of blanking them? And, more broadly, looking at an example, User:Canbcan register an account in 2002, made a user page with a few words and hasn't returned in nearly seven years. Is there a reason to keep pages like that indefinitely? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Blanking is a gentler-than-deletion way of saying “that is not OK”. Unlike deletion, it is not disempowering, and offers the initially wayward editor that chance to comply by not reversing the blanking. For cases of non-active editors, it is an effective way to hide content. I understand that no known archives/search engines trawl histories, while some ignore NOINDEX. I also understand that small, never looked at pages cost less than a reasonable cost analysis of thinking about them, and that when deleted, they are never really deleted (despite Brion warns against relying on this [9]). I would blank User:Canbcan, and for all of your cases, I wouldn’t unblank if you blanked them. There is no good reason to keep them indefinitely, but there’s no good reason to worry about them either. I don’t like a misusable needless blank cheque to delete. I don’t think User:Canbcan, the page, should be deleted unless it is also sought to delete that account itself.

But isn’t straying needlessly into the gray areas? Non-newcomer non-contributors secret/hidden/myspace subpages: Delete at MfD? yes. Speediable? Yes, when authorised at WP:CSD. Should speediability be authorised? Yes. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, following this thought experiment for a moment, why not do the same for articles? We could just blank spam and test pages, but we don't, right? Why treat the userspace different?

Also, user accounts are never deleted. And we're not discussing a blank check to delete. We're discussing narrow parameters to say, "while we appreciate your ability to register an account and create a test page, it doesn't need to stay around (blanked or not) indefinitely." --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

We do remove spam and tests without the need to delete. The spam and tests stay in the revision history indefinitely. We do and should give more leeway in userspace. There is no perforance issue involved. User:Canbcan is in no way abusing wikipedia. He might even make a mainspace contribution next month. I can understand how secret pages might irritate you, but I don’t understand why you feel a need to do delete dormant userpages Perhaps you think that if User:Canbcan’s userpage is deleted due to “no contributions for more than 1 year and no contributions outside userpace ever” then the deletion may give him an impetus to make that first copy-edit? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's any need to immortalize a person's ability to register an account and make a page that says "poop". That's not what user pages are for. Nobody said anything about performance or abuse. But we're not a webhost and we're not a test site. Can you explain why you feel the page User:I like pie mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm should stay around forever? --MZMcBride (talk) 07:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That one is vandalism. I'd delete the page. I'd delete the account too, if it were easy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) What I'm trying to do here is develop guidelines that say, "if you've never made any useful contributions and your user page is being used for X, Y, or Z," it's going to be deleted. Vandalism, spamming, etc. would fall into the X, Y, Z categories, right? User:Rezolve for example. Or User:Desert Ridge A JW Marriott Resort & Spa. Or User:Smith510. Or User:Morphgarage. These are all examples of what appears to be spam. Can these be deleted?

What about User:Drosele? This page was taken from everything2.com and is likely a copyright violation. And then there are pages like User:Chominick Chaple. This is a resumé. We're not job board. Is there any reason to keep this page around indefinitely? Countless MFDs have supported deleting purely promotional user pages like this.

But I don't think nominating each of these pages for MFD individually is practical or efficient. Clear guidelines are what's needed. So can we work on creating some? :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 08:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

These new examples are clear or close CSD#G11/12. They are not plausible userpages in the intended sense. I don't see a need for a new guideline here, is there something I don't know. Delete these new examples as CSD#G11/12. Use a summary that suggests the possibility that the deletion was a mistake. Do you get talkpage protests or DRV cases? I don't expect you'll have a problem deleting spam pages masquerading as article pages in userspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but not everything is so clear-cut. What about User:Mymanalex? Is that spam? Is it needed? Perhaps the user is trying to spam. Or perhaps they're using us as a webhost.... Should that page be deleted? Or pages like User:Shawnanthonyconnor? User:Neillly88right? User:Eitannem seems sort of promotional. Do you agree? Copy-paste jobs from random sites? User:Canadian Lawyer? Are we a pastebin? --MZMcBride (talk) 09:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If in doubt, use WP:MfD. That's what MfD is for. Despite your assertions, I do not agree that MfD has ever shown a consensus that all of any type of page outside CSD criteria can be summarily deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I like this proposal, and agree with it. Although I think we shouldn't have to contact the users first. I originally went inactive for that time, and would have been happier if my userpage was deleted. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 11:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm opposed to it. I don't think lack of contributions should be a criterion for deleting user pages. Furthermore I don't see how the project would benefit from their deletion, I'd just let them be. Obvious promotional pieces or copyright violations can be dealt with using the existing criteria. A user page that says: Hi! I'm Joe, I'm 20 years old etc.. is not really hurting anybody. That Joe's last edit was in 2002 is inconsequential, he might still be an active reader, and might be offended by seeing his quite modest page being deleted. 189.105.41.65 (talk) 14:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. And I don't think "what's the point of keeping it?" is a valid rationale for deleting. Unless a userpage is clearly harmful, it should stay. Martin^msgj 15:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I prefer a staged reaction: For eligible accounts as defined above: If no logins in last year, email user and put a note on the talk page. If no logins 3 months later blank all pages but User: and User_talk: and put a report of what was blanked on User_talk:. If no logins 3 months later delete all but User: and User_talk: and append a report saying what was done and that the pages can be recovered on request. Any time the user logs in, the clock starts over. I would also add to the eligibility requirement: If an account is tagged as on break or as a non-editing user by the account-holder, it is ineligible for blanking/deletion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- There's no way to know the last time an account logged on. And as discussed above, creating thousands of talk pages just to tell the user that you're going to delete (or blank) their user page seems pretty silly and wasteful. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I think I support, but have we defined what "non-deleted contributions" means? Does that mean that any page they've edited has since been literally deleted? Wouldn't it amount to the same thing if we can't see evidence of their original edits because of further edits by other people? - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 17:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd prefer blanking and replacing with a template (it could be called {{inactive-user}}) in favor of deletion; that way they know what's going on, and they can revert if they decide to become an editor after all. I also believe these should be treated on a case-by-case basis. Some are using user space to spam about products; some are using it for social communication; some merely haven't gotten around to doing any editing yet, but have a normal-looking user page. In the last case any sort of deletion or blanking seems pointless. Dcoetzee 18:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- So you would treat them all the same? What's the purpose of blanking spam? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support MZMcBride's original proposal. If the user has not totally forgotten the existence of the page, they can easily make a new one or ask for the old one to be restored. bd2412 T 21:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose any authorisation of out-of-process deletions or extra-CSD deletion criteria to be authorised here. MZMcBride has not justified his proposal. WP:CSD criteria already suffice, and outside of those criteria, no userspace can be speedy deleted, all such cases must be listed at WP:MfD. There is no case that MfD is overrun with such cases. Further, in almost all cases, blanking is sufficient to stop WP:NOT#NOTWEBHOST abuse, and where blanking is not sufficient, blocking, not deletion, is the appropriate remedy. Except where WP:DENY applies, deletion is not desirable as it hinders the ability of non-admins to track continuing abusers of wikipedia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- I agree insofar as we should not authorize speedy deletion in any policy outside of WP:CSD - that kind of spreading stuff around will inevitably lead to confusion. If he gathers support for such a rule here, let him carry the discussion over to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion where it will be evaluated according to the usual criteria criteria. Dcoetzee 23:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

What's the problem we're trying to solve? It seems like there are more pressing issues for our efforts in article space: copyright violations, vandalism, dubious articles and BLP problems. Why spend all this time worrying about user pages? We run across a spam or attack page, we delete it per existing criteria. Otherwise, we spend our time on more pressing issues. As for anything that doesn't immediately meet our existing criteria, either blank it and leave a note or else take it to MfD.

We've deleted 100,000s of old IP talk pages in the last month or two -- is our encyclopaedia any better for it? Do our articles load faster? Is our content more reliable? Have we measurably lowered the Wikimedia Foundation's electric bill and cut air conditioning demand in its server room? Aside from deleting a lot of useful spammer data, I wouldn't say that deleting these old IP pages otherwise harmed the project but when we move on to deleting registered user pages then I do think the problems definitely outweigh the benefits. Even if 19 out of 20 user pages belong to folks that will never edit here in the future, why run off that 20th editor who might?

If the proposal to have a WP:NONCON should pass, I strongly believe any deletions made using that new deletion criterion should be done manually by an admin actually looking at the page. It should not be done by a bot or some highly automated script that takes the administrator out of the review process. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, "copyright violations, vandalism, dubious articles and BLP problems" all exist in these user pages. So, yes, it's a problem. A quite serious one considering the lack of monitoring in this area and the Google juice of Wikipedia user pages. For some examples of the problems found in user pages, see the examples discussed with SmokeyJoe above. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes and we already have policies and guidelines for dealing with user pages that have copyright violations or BLP problems. We have the "undo" button for vandalism and we have MfD for dubious articles in user space. You can also just blank a problematic page. I see no need for a new policy or guideline. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I've tagged some pages from speedy deletion. Any declines, I brought to MFD. Does that sound reasonable? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a very reasonable approach. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Cross-wiki contributors: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:SI461AN reminds me of another point. I still don't support the proposed WP:NONCON, but if we go down that path we should be careful not to delete pages of contributors active on other projects. In my own extreme case, I have user pages on 150 to 200 projects in connection with my meta admin work but I've not otherwise edited several of these projects;^[10][11] I'd still be put off if someone deleted one of my pages. Note that we have a cross-wiki contributions tool to quickly find cross-wiki edits; unfortunately it is not working today -- it occasionally goes wobbly due to toolserver or database issues. If there's cross-wiki user page spam, some of my meta colleagues will clean it up; you can report it at meta:Talk:Spam blacklist#User: namespace abuse. (I work a lot with the meta blacklist but have never fooled with these cross-wiki user pages reports since I think they're a waste of time given the other much more severe spam problems we struggle with.) In SI461AN's particular case, I manually checked both id.wikipedia and my.wikipedia (his user page is in either Malay or Indonesian) and there were no contributions under that name.

MZMcBride, you may wish to leave a note at meta:Talk:Spam blacklist#Discussion; there may be some synergy in tool development between what you've done with user pages on en.wikipedia and what some meta admins have developed for cross-wiki user page issues. Selfishly, I'd rather you sticked with en.wikipedia and worked on some new spam investigation tools -- you seem to be a prolific tool and script-writer! See the latter part of the discussion at meta:User talk:A. B.#User:COIBot/XWiki/mountainzones.com etc for some ideas and a link to another admin's tool wishlist. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted contributions -- those with access to a user's deleted contributions should also look at them as well. If the person has made good faith efforts to write an article -- even a lousy, speedily deleted article -- that should be a positive consideration in keeping the user page. On the other hand, obvious bad-faith spam or attack contributions may tip gray-area decisions towards blanking, blocking and/or speedy deletion. (If it's spam, please also leave a warning on the talk page along with a live link to any spam domains formatted as http://sss.example.com; the added "sss" identifies these links as spam flags.) --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I support this proposal and can accept it as non-controversial housekeeping. Keeping those user pages does not help the encyclopaedia one bit. --Amalthea 01:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
The rationale makes sense for this; we really don't use complete blanking for anything, I certainly don't see why it would be desirable in this case. I don't buy the "but they might edit soon argument" at all - its not like they're deleted after a week. These are pages where the user created the page a year or more ago, and hasn't made a single edit since, the odds of them coming back and being a regular contributor are virtually nil, the odds that these pages violate some policy or another is a lot higher. Mr.Z-man 02:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
- My main concern, regardless of whether the page is deleted or blanked, is that the user gets an explanation. Yes, most of these users will never edit again; the ones who will would be justly quite upset that they couldn't just go on a long wikibreak and come back without their user page "expiring." Dcoetzee 04:34, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  - Users who have 0 non-deleted edits outside userspace who haven't edited in more than a year? TBH, I would be incredibly surprised if any were on a "wikibreak," that would be like taking a sabbatical before getting a job. They haven't done anything, what's to take a break from? Mr.Z-man 04:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose the proposal. I thought we weren't supposed to worry about performance, and for all we know the users who created these pages are continuing to read Wikipedia, just preferring not to edit. Maybe most of the users whose pages would be deleted under this proposal might never notice, but a few of them might. And the ones who did notice would be likely to respond by complaining about Wikipedia on other web sites, blogs, message boards, etc., thus promoting the belief that Wikipedia is run by a group of petty-minded administrators. I don't see any real benefit from this proposal. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:18, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose This is really a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the first place. Any non-contributors who's userpage breaks any of the rules, can be removed, otherwise just leave them as they are. Lugnuts (talk) 08:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose Lugnuts is correct. There is no problem that this proposal would solve. If the pages do not violate any policies, it's our task to assume that they were created as test pages for further editing. If it's spam, G11 applies. If it violates copyright, we have G12. If it does not violate anything at all, there is no reason to delete these pages. It just creates more fuss, more work, more deletions that don't benefit the encyclopidia. The time wasted discussing this or deleting such pages could be better devoted to all those backlogs that do matter without there being any harm from such pages. Regards So Why 13:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

— Note: I have advertised this discussion at WT:CSD to get more input by users who are actively involved with speedy deletion discussions. So Why 13:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

To waste more people's time discussing this? :P Martin^msgj 13:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, noone forces them to waste their time. But they should be able to, if they like ;-) So Why 13:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Support: As I've stated numerous times before. seicer | talk | contribs 16:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose I looked at a random sampling of the example pages, and didn't see a single one that had any pressing need to be deleted. In all the discussions of this topic, I haven't see a single widespread problem that this addresses. If there are problems on an individual user page, address those problems on an individual basis. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 16:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd say that if a userpage violates something definite (e.g. is a copyvio, promotional, spam etc.) then it should be deleted irrespective of whether that user has other useful contributions, or whether he edited in the past year. (Whether this happens via CSD or by MfD depends on case.) But if the userpage is otherwise not terribly wrong, I'd support Dcoetzee suggestion above: blank the page, and replace it with a template such as {{inactive-user}}. Here, I've had a go at this myself: have a look at User:Ekjon Lok/inactive-user, I've tried to make it non-BITEy and informative, yet firm. Again, the application should still be looked at on case-by-case basis, I believe. -- Ekjon Lok (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose We have no way of determining who is doing what on WP as far as use is concerned. It is, moreover, evident that making a person feel less than welcome is unlikely to make them suddenly start editing. At this juncture I would also like to state that unless and until WP produces an "only English in userspace" policy, that deletion reasons ought not include the main argument that the material is not in English. Collect (talk) 14:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose - with the SUL feature, a lot of interwiki users might have pages that are inactive etc. Also, we already have ways to handle problematic instances, like CSD on copyvio and vandalism - perhaps we need to expand the meaning to Userspace. I oppose any rule that might allow for the automated deletion of content under any circumstance, even of extreme cruft. Deletion should always be subjected to community oversigth. --Cerejota (talk) 19:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment: The G-series of CSD codes (G11, spam; G12, copyvio, etc.) already apply to all namespaces -- see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#General: "These criteria apply to all namespaces, and are in addition to namespace-specific criteria in following sections." --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment - why not a prod-like category? make it a LONG waiting time, like a month. if a user has never made any contribution and doesn't notice that their page has this tag within a month, then it's probably all right to delete the page. I do believe this is needed, mostly because of userpage images. (Though perhaps another solution might be more narrowly tailored to this problem.) Right now there are thousands upon thousands of orphan images, or images only used in userpages, in Wikipedia. These really should be evaluated and moved to the commons if they're useful. Keeping around userpages, and the images on them, creates more maintenance work for people trying to do these cleanup tasks. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose This seems like an unnecessary rule that solves a non-problem, sorry. Flopsy Mopsy and Cottonmouth (talk) 20:18, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose this deletion of valuable information that aids in vandal and spam fighting. Themfromspace (talk) 21:13, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose this may delete valuable information, and I think it is not nice, that an editor who edits every now and then comes back at a certain point finding his userpage gone, because someone deemed the compliment "the best database" (cea mai bună bază de date) not a useful userpage. I don't see the gain, but do see the losses. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Support, with the proviso that we should restore any such user page upon request from the original user. Given the "no edits for a year" condition, I'd say that the chances of anyone's feelings being hurt or us scaring off any potential contributors are pretty slim. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC).
Oppose if the page is harmless it can just stay there, new users who lose their page will probably have no idea how to ask for it back again. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose This seems like a solution to a non-existent problem. Is Wikipedia running out of space, or something? If the userpages break some form of policy, they can be deleted via WP:CSD or taken to WP:MFD if CSD doesn't apply. I see no reason to just summarily delete the pages because of non-activity of the user. It seems far too WP:BITEy to me. Raven1977 ^{Talk to me}_{My edits} 21:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose Two further reasons to oppose this proposal: first, the single unified login will create lots of accounts for people who may edit in other languages and occasionally read in english (I know it has for me for non-english wikipedias). Deleting these accounts will give rise to a pointless cycle of constantly creating and then deleting accounts. Second, most people who use wikipedia are readers, not editors. A reader may want to create a userpage so they can use the watchlist facilty; that is legitimate and should not be opposed. Finally, on a broader point, deletion - no matter how valid - always discourages users from contributing and therefore the burden of proof - the demonstration of harm - should lie with those who want to delete. AndrewRT(Talk) 18:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
For right now, Oppose; Reserve right to change opinion. Wikipedia is a site that has not been around for ages. It has been around a decent amount of time, but the only reason I oppose to this is that the person could come back if they wanted, and if they made significant edits to their users space, they may have been working on something important that they didn't have time to get back to in a while (job, school, etc). Removing this kind of information serves no relevant purpose, and is destructive. However, I think these users should have their usernames moved to a temporary "Guest" name, so if other people want the username, they can take it. We can't expect for a person to "save their seat" for a year, and not let someone else have the name. If the person wants to come back, they could request a username change. Problem solved. -Axmann8 (Talk) 04:31, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose this is a solution is search of a problem. Deleting won't actually lessen server load (it actually increases it by adding yet another revision to the page). Also, people may register accounts to be able to set user preferences and store articles to read without ever contributing to the article space. That is not something that should be discouraged. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Support per Amalthea. --Ixfd64 (talk) 08:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Comment - by the way, a large number of user pages consist of nothing but toolbar experiments. In fact, I've decided to be bold and delete such pages since most of those users probably had no serious intent in creating a user page. If they contain content other than toolbar experiments, then I only remove the tests and do not delete the page. If I have any doubt, I leave the page alone. --Ixfd64 (talk) 08:22, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of indefinitely blocked user talk pages

I have raised the issue of deleting the user talk pages of indefinitely blocked editors at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Deletion of indefinitely blocked user talk pages. Comments and suggestions are welcome. --Vassyana (talk) 09:18, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

WHOIS tags

Can we include in the IP userpage policy that WHOIS tags cannot be removed? WHOIS tags are not comments, so they cannot be removed, but I think we should make it a little more explicit. Matty (talk) 03:54, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

It already is. See the second paragraph under Wikipedia:User page#Removal of comments, warnings. — Kralizec! (talk) 05:17, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

sandbox?

How do I create my own sandbox? Kamila 064 (talk) 12:56, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Click on this link: User:Kamila 064/sandbox and you can create the page. pablo_hablo. 13:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Subject line: The Best Way to do online market Quality

Hi.

In your opinion, what's the best way to do online market quality and why do you think it is so? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Akunan21100 (talk • contribs) 02:18, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Removal of comments

I fixed the wikilink in this section, and slightly restricted the scope so that it only applies to registered users. With IP addesses it is preferable that all recent warnings remain visible, but as always common sense should be applied. Therefore a blanket ban on restoring warnings on unregistered users pages could be actually detrimental to the project, as multiple 1st notices may be removed by an editor who is gaming the system. Verbal chat 12:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

See for example Wikipedia_talk:User_page/Archive_4#Apparently_IPs_don.27t_count_as_users. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

That's from over a year ago, and I'm not saying IPs don't count as users - just that the privileged of being able to remove current/recent warnings should be curtailed to registered editors, for the reason I outlined. It is a different change/proposal, and I didn't look at the archives from over a year ago. Thanks, Verbal chat 12:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

That discussion only included two users, also. Maybe we should try and establish a new consensus and discuss this and any other related proposals. Verbal chat 12:51, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The reason it was only between two users (I was the one of the two on the losing end of that debate), is because it was a fork of the main discussion at Village pump (policy). That discussion -which resulted in a very clear reaffirmation of the previous community consensus- may be viewed at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 42#Wikipedia:User page and IP's. — Kralizec! (talk) 13:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

There's been a lot more discussion, some of it is linked from that archive. There is no ban on restoring warnings, but what the policy does is to not endorse edit warring over the restoration. Registered and unregistered users are alike - if they've removed the warning you know that they've read it, but with most unregistered users you also have the complication that it probably wasn't intended for them. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Then I think the text needs altering. Obviously you shouldn't edit war warnings/tags anywhere, but restoring current tags to an IP page seems reasonable to me - and you seem to agree. We should maybe add a sentence along these lines (to be worked out here)? Verbal chat 12:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

No, zzuuzz was saying that it is inappropriate to restore warnings that have been removed. And I agree. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I see restoring warnings as particularly pointless, and edit warring over restoration as positively harmful. One should remember that with most shared or dynamic IPs, the warnings are no longer relevant once they have raised the orange message bar. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 13:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

(un-dent) Editing warring with a user on their own talk page is the height of futility. Hence why the official policy on Vandalism was updated [12] 1208 days ago, and the User page guideline was updated [13] 808 days ago to explicitly state that users may remove content at will from their own talk pages. — Kralizec! (talk) 13:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I haven't proposed edit warring with users or IPs on their associated talk pages. What I might propose is something similar to the following: If you go to warn an editor and notice that several recent warnings have been removed, you can place your warning and replace other recent warnings you think may be of relevance to the user - at adjust the level of your warning appropriately (no need to replace lower levels of the same warning you place). And of course the IP is free to remove them, and you shouldn't replace (unless undoing vandalism) the same warning for no good reason. I was not calling for edit warring, and would ask editors here to engage a bit more and be less dismissive in their answers. Secondly, should other editors (as I have seen today) be allowed to remove warnings that were replaced, in good faith, if hey feel it was inappropriate? This seems to me to be a form of wheel/edit warring and is something we should also avoid. Should something about this be added? Zzuuzz, I had no intention of misinterpreting you - I took my cue from "There is no ban on restoring warnings, but what the policy does is to not endorse edit warring over the restoration", which I agree with and is relevant to my second point here. Thanks, Verbal chat 13:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

In reply to Zzuuzz, they can also be relevant if there is an ongoing problem with that IP. Verbal chat 13:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

While I cannot speak for zzuuzz, I presume he is referring to the fact that editors who insist on restoring deleted warnings have been blocked for WP:3RR and WP:HARASS. So while policy does not prohibit you from restoring deleted messages, it also will not protect you from being blocked for it either. — Kralizec! (talk) 13:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Nor do I think an exception should be made to 3RR in this case. Do you think it is appropriate to revert an editor or admin who has in good faith restored warnings, and if so why? Thanks, Verbal chat 13:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, what do you think of my proposal about being able to restore recent (other) warnings if you are placing a new warning? This would help editors to get the level right and possibly report serial problem editors to AIV quicker, as the levels are escalated correctly, and you only have to look back at the last warning placed? This could even be added to admin/automatic tools. Verbal chat 13:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

That is true. Once upon a time policy was interpreted as not allowing anyone to remove warnings from their talk page, and what we found was that a new user would arrive at the IP address, see the orange message bar for a vandal who was there months ago, clear out the crap from the talk page, get reverted and warned for vandalism, get blocked, and then have their page protected. It's a situation we don't want again. Warnings are only applicable to, and read by, the user who is active at the time it's added to the talk page. In other cases the warnings were meant for a different user. What you're proposing is not prohibited by policy, and there is no reason to change policy to allow it. But I also notice that you're not extending this to registered users? -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 13:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

How can warnings be restored in good faith when official Wikipedia policy states that editors may remove messages at will from their own talk pages? A good faith assumption should be made the first time it happens because the editor restoring the messages may not be aware that their revert is against policy. Beyond that, any restoration of removed messages is edit warring (which is defined at WP:EW as "an edit war occurs when contributors...repeatedly revert each other's contributions"). — Kralizec! (talk) 13:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that continuing the supposed edit warring is the answer to that problem. Basically, I feel unless there is obvious bad faith, it should be left - and perhaps a polite and non patronising note left with the user that did the restoration pointing them here. But reverting seems to needlessly provoke drama and is more likely to initiate an edit war. Also, note "repeatedly", the first truely repeated revert would be the third editor removing the replaced warnings. Hence I don't think that's on. Verbal chat 13:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that IPs should be allowed to blank the page (apart from headers, etc), unless there is an ongoing problem. Indeed my initial focus was to IP addresses, but some of this can be extended to registered users. With named users, however, it's easier to look at their contribs and know it is them and then interact accordingly. With an IP you don't have this and replacing of warnings to make them aware of continuing problems, and a nice prod to get an account so they can avoid them may be useful. I think this is something worth thinking about. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that other people removing warnings from IP/User pages (except obviously trolling ones) should be discouraged - but I think that kind of editing already is, non? For example, the case I mentioned above to Kralizec! I have to go for a while now - but thanks for the input. Verbal chat 13:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sandboxes

Can I make more than one sandbox? and if so how? Clyde1998 (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Just create a new user-space subpage. — Kralizec! (talk) 14:12, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Shall I use: User:Clyde1998/Sandbox2? And If so will there be a link back to my page? Clyde1998 (talk) 15:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll use the one above! (User:Clyde1998/Sandbox2). If I shouldn't say what I need to change, say within 30 mins Clyde1998 (talk) 12:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes you can use that. If you want a link back to your page, just put one in that subpage. Rd232 ^talk 12:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Ownership

If I find something nice in a userpage (specificly, something very very creative and hard to be buid), can I take it? I mean: the user who made it took a hard work to do it (i.e. a very featured and customized object that displays the time), then can he claim some sort of rights or something over the 'thing'??? Damërung (talk)

When you go to edit this or any other page, you may note the following text that appears two lines above the edit summary box: "you irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL." — Kralizec! (talk) 02:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

All content on Wikipedia, including user page content, is available under a free license, permitting you to reuse it without specific permission as long as you follow the terms (in this case, indicating where you got it from in your edit summary). The sole exception is the Wikipedia logo. Indeed, it is mere convention and etiquette that user pages do not receive the same "merciless editing" as articles. Dcoetzee 03:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, if you do take and re-use someone's creative work, regardless of law or anything law-related, it's usually a nice gesture to credit them in some fashion (a talk page post thanking them, including their name in the source code, etc.). --MZMcBride (talk) 03:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

fringeness

What about turning one's user page into a Wikipedia article that's been deleted from mainspace, per consensus that it's crackpot? I'm thinking of User:Iberomesornix. After this article was rejected, the editor recreated it on his user page and attempted to link to it from mainspace; just now another (?) editor used it as a source for adding some of the content back into mainspace.[14] Would I be out of line in deleting it? kwami (talk) 00:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Good question. I don't see anything wrong with reverting (once, anyway) the addition of fringe material if it came from an article rejected for that reason; at minimum, this should lead to some hopefully fruitful discussion on the article talk page. (Make sure that the edit summary is informative.) As for the user page, if you don't get a good answer here, you want to ask at the talk page for WP:FRINGE. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

When I brought it up elsewhere, it was deleted for me, with the comment that it was an inappropriate use of a user page. kwami (talk) 01:23, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

User talk pages

I'm looking for a guideline that says, basically, "user talk pages are used for editors to communicate with each other". I thought that was rather obvious, but (unless I'm missing something), this guideline doesn't actually say that, nor does Wikipedia:Talk page or Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.

And yes, there is a real situation behind this. I've suggested that User talk:Debresser is confusing to other editors (because it's not used as a standard user talk page), but it would be really nice to actually point to something that says how a user talk page should be used.

Suggestions? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I suppose you haven't seen User talk:YellowMonkey... decltype (talk) 06:51, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

No, hadn't seen, but that seems disruptive. So, again - is there any guidance as to what is the proper (or even normal) use of a user talk page? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Archive Pages

How do I make an Archive Page? Clyde1998 (talk) 15:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Help:Archiving a talk page. Rd232 ^talk 15:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Deleting sub-pages

What is the process of deleting another user's subpage? Section "Deleting user pages and subpages" has only got information on "Deleting your own sub pages". Jay (talk) 10:20, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

If you believe that another user's subpage should be deleted, you can list it at WP:MfD. Pages that are unambiguous copyright violations or attack pages, can be tagged for speedy deletion per CSD G12 and CSD G10, respectively. decltype (talk) 10:24, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added this information to the top of the section. Jay (talk) 11:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I had no idea you wanted to put it into the guideline! I thought you just wanted to know the technicalities, so I gave a rather informal answer. I have made some clarifications in the guideline, feel free to further improve on it. decltype (talk) 12:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I did actually want to know the technicality. I've asked politely at User talk:Wikid77. Guideline looks good. Jay (talk) 10:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

"Creating user subpages" section could use some editting for clarity

As far as I can tell the section doesn't actually say how to create a subpage. It provides some good overview info and how to create a link to your subpage (the sandbox example), but then doesn't mention that you need to navigate to that red link and then select the "Start the User:ExampleUser/Sandbox page" link to actually create the page. I'm new here as a contrib, so if this isn't correct don't bite my head off.

Also, I think the following paragraph could use some adjustments since it is kind of confusing and misleading.

To link to a user subpage called "Sandbox" from your main user page, place the text
[[/Sandbox]]
on your page, or use a piped link with the same source. Make sure to experiment on your user page, not on this page! Do not forget the first forward slash or you will put the page in the main namespace as a regular article and will have to ask for speedy deletion if you save what you write (by tagging the page with {{db-author}}). If your user page does not have a subpage named "Sandbox", the link will appear to be red, indicating that a page has no content, and if you just navigate away without saving any content the page will not be created and there is nothing to delete.

I believe the purpose of the last sentence is to clarify the preceding one, so if a user creates a link to a subpage without the slash, but doesn't actually commit any content to that new subpage, we don't have to worry about deletion and can just edit the link to include the omitted slash. But to me at least it doesn't do this very clearly, and is kind of misleading. First, like the third sentence says, if the user forgets the slash the page will be placed in the main namespace, so it doesn't matter at all if user already has a subpage named "Sandbox" at all. In fact, if they're following with the example, forgetting the slash would link to the Sandbox disambiguation page, and thus would definitely not be red. Second, someone could interpret it as saying if you mistakenly omit the slash and your link shows up red, you need not request deletion. This might be true, but if someone forgets the slash and is trying to give their subpage the same name as an existing wikipedia article (Sandbox, Other, Edits, etc), then they might mistakenly request a deletion of that valid article only because their link was not red. Like mentioned above, I believe the sentence is trying to clarify on a small ambiguity in the preceding sentence ("ask for speedy deletion if you save what you write"), where 'save what you write' could be interpreted to mean saving the link code on your user page rather then actual content to that new misplaced page.

Ironic how a sentence that was probably written to address possible confusion from that ambiguity actually accomplishes the exact opposite of its goal :p To me it would make more sense to just change that slightly ambiguous sentence and drop the last one all together; Perhaps if it said something like "... ask for speedy deletion if you saved any content to the misplaced page." MiloKral (talk) 06:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it's a confusing mess and a lot of that could probably be trimmed. I suggest you go ahead and improve it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm working on polishing up this section at one of my user sandboxes (Here). Once I reach autoconfirmed status in a couple days I'll merge it into this. Feel free to constructively edit my draft at will, or leave me comments/suggestions on my talkpage. --MiloKral (talk) 00:38, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

...More on creating user pages

I’m trying to create my user page. When I sign in to Wikipedia, my user name appears in red at the top. I understand that that is because I have not created my page yet. But when I click on that link, my browser takes me to Megaclick (“not found”). Well, of course! I haven’t created it yet!

So I go to “create a user-space subpage,” which takes me to the “Wikipedia: User page” project page tab. In the Contents box, I click on “Creating user subpages,” which takes me to that section. I want to see the example (User: Example/Lipsum), so I click on that link and see another link, “your personal sandbox,” in the last line. When I click it, Megaclick appears.

I continue with the section on “How to create a user subpage”—and have to pause to edit it—and read “To create a subpage, first create a link on your user page….” That’s a Catch-22 situation; where did I miss the link “How to create a user page”?

At the bottom of “Wikipedia: User page,” I see “Wikipedia: User page design center” and go there. The third sentence of the second paragraph on the project page tab tells me “If you don't have a user page yet and don’t know how to create a page, then click on your user name at the top of the screen and follow the instructions (if the page already exists, your username will be blue instead of red).” (Oh, that line needs to be edited….)

I’ve gone around and around and just clicked on “Special: Mypage,” which took me to—guess where?—Megaclick.

How do the rest of you create your user pages?

Hi MiloKral. You write above, "you need to navigate to that red link and then select the 'Start the User:ExampleUser/Sandbox page' link to actually create the page.'" Is that red link the uncreated user page? --WR1T (talk) 09:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi WriteRight1stTime. The Megaclick thing you describe leads me to strongly believe that you have some kind of virus or spyware on your computer, because that's not what's supposed to happen when you click a redlink. I took the liberty of creating the page for you, but you really should get your computer scanned for spyware removal. Regards, decltype (talk) 09:48, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Decltype. I need a new computer.... You did! Thanks very much!... "Ph.D" is supposed to be "Ph.D."--72.234.64.99 (talk) 10:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Interestingly enough, that typo even made the main page. decltype (talk) 10:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

My comment was actually referring to this old version of the page, pointing out it did not explain at all how to actually create the page. In any case, you are correct, a red colored link signifies that it points to a page that does not exist. My comment above might be kind of misleading, as it isn't 100% correct (I'm new here too, still learning). I've discovered that the page you see when you navigate to a non-existent page differs depending on HOW you reach it. I created my sandbox subpage by navigating to my user page and appending '/Sandbox' to the location bar on my browser. This will bring up the page I mentioned, where you need to select the 'Start the ... page' link to bring up the text editor frame. However, if you get to a non-existent page by following a red link, the page will already have the text editor frame, effectively bypassing 'Start the .... page' page. The difference is due to the '&redlink=1' parameter that wiki software automatically appends to URLs of interwiki links that point to a page that doesn't exist. In both situations, you create the userpage (or subpage) by entering any content into the text editor and saving via the 'Save page' button.

Thanks for fixing up some grammer in my edit, and I hope my above explanation clears up some of the confusion. I made changes to the old version in hopes of avoiding the situation you & I both experienced; it took me about an hour of crawling through unclear docs and help sections to accomplish my goal of creating a user sandbox subpage. I encourage you to clarify further on anything you found confusing so future new users can have a smoother experience. --MiloKral (talk) 19:36, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Saqib Saeed Qureshi

Assalam O Allaikum —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saqibsaeedqureshi (talk • contribs) 11:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Well hello. pablo_hablo. 12:33, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Wa alayka as-salam. –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 16:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Simulated MediaWiki Interfaces

While it's been around for a while, this section was added seemingly without consensus. I don't see a compelling reason for it and will remove it soon unless I see a reason not to. Stifle (talk) 14:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a reasonable compromise wording, and I don't think it should be removed. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 14:42, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

First off I was at that debate and I don't see how you can say there was not a consensus, there was a huge debate with hundreds of people. Secondly, I cannot think of a website of any significance that allows users to forge elements of their user interface in such a way as to trick other users into clicking links they did not intend. Plenty of users have said that it is disruptive to their activities of writing an encyclopedia, that is a fine reason to ~~not allow it~~ frown upon it. Chillum 14:50, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

The original addition of the content was here. As the edit summary notes, it was added based on discussion on the talk page. I don't see a particularly good reason to remove the section, though I also don't believe there's any consensus currently to make it stronger (responding specifically to Chillum's comment). --MZMcBride (talk) 15:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreeing that the simulating the interface can be disruptive and the sentence should be kept. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:53, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Redirecting user page to article

The guideline states that "One should never create links from a mainspace article to any userpage." Some users are interpreting that to mean that it's acceptable to go the other way, by redirecting a user page to an article. Thoughts? Exploding Boy (talk) 02:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't really see the harm in that. Would you mind linking to a specific example of this? decltype (talk) 02:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

A user recently redirected their user page to Autofellatio, apparently as a protest. Exploding Boy (talk) 03:45, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Disruptive and WP:POINTy. Politely request them not to do that. Rd232 ^talk 09:13, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Clearly disruptive and pointy. The user was resistant to polite requests by several editors, quoting this guideline to support his claim that this type of redirect is permissible. So, is it ever appropriate for a user page to be redirected to an article, and should the guideline be interpreted to mean that only redirects from articles to user pages are disallowed? Exploding Boy (talk) 15:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

?

what do you do if you find a user page that advertizes Parker1297 (talk) 17:23, 27 July 2009 (UTC) excuse the spelling.

Tag it for CSD-G11 with {{db-spam}}. Jclemens (talk) 17:24, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Encouraging blanking/redirecting before MfDing

In line with my now standard arguments at WP:MFD for blanking/redirecting in preference to listing at MfD for many abandoned or otherwise uncontroversial userspace pages, arguments which often are not disputed and even form the consensus conclusion, I have[15] modified userpage guidance at Wikipedia:User_page#Deleting.2C_or_otherwise_fixing.2C_other_users.27_userpages_and_subpages. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

The section mentioned db-copyvio and db-attack, and I added {{db-G11}} (also known as {{db-spam}}, but I generally avoid the word "spam" when I can). G11 on userpages is something I spend a lot of time on, and I understand that there's nothing we can say in just a few words that will catch all the nuances of what can be speedied for G11, so it's likely people won't apply the db-G11 tag correctly if their only exposure is the short description at WP:CSD#G11, but that's okay, deletion admins are generally pretty good at making these calls. We're always working on more specific guidance, if anyone wants more detailed guidance, and perhaps specifics would be appropriate for this page, I don't know. - Dank (push to talk) 17:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Anon talk page blanking

I disagree with Policy does not prohibit users, including both registered and anonymous users, from removing comments from their own talk pages in respect of anons. Anons are unknown. Multiple people can share the same IP. Hence, they cannot blank the page William M. Connolley (talk) 23:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd have to agree. -- œ ^™ 16:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Please discuss and get consensus before removing this:

"Policy does not prohibit users, including both registered and anonymous users"

Ikip (talk) 09:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Both policy and logic suggest that anons shouldn't be able to do this. Even static IP anonymous users don't, in any important sense, have their "own" talk page - they haven't made the minimal effort to register and create a talk page of their own. And temporary users of dynamic IPs obviously don't have their "own" talk page. Rd232 ^talk 09:50, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

There are some editors who simply don't want to register, they should not be punished for this decision. checking a users talk page is simple, you just check the history or block log and it will become apparent what the editor did or did not do, the same as with editors with user names. Ikip (talk)

Nah, static IPs should also be able to archive, and I have no problems with blanking, or with replacement with a simple notice/template. Some IP talkpages become impossible to read due to heavy vandalism from them. As long as the edit history is still there (which is the case after blanking, as opposite to talk page deletion which has been common practice), and preferably 'recent' warnings, I don't see a problem. If the IP is itself disruptively blanking its own talkpage (or related talkpages), then that would be a bit more of a problem (though still). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Finding the history on this:

Wikipedia_talk:User_page/Archive_4#Apparently_IPs_don.27t_count_as_users Luna Santin has some really good, strong points on why she added this line in the first place.

Wikipedia_talk:User_page/Archive_4#Changes regarding IP talk pages 23 June 2008:

User:zzuuzz: "Probably the last big discussion, the one preceding the written change, was at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 42#Wikipedia:User page and IP's, and this was preceded and followed by various discussions on the admin noticeboards which reached a similar conclusion. The cause of it all is that increasingly as people are relying on policy without applying common sense, too many people were biting newbies by fighting to enforce the retention of irrelevant warnings."

User:Kralizec! However because people (including me) were still getting it wrong with unregistered editors, the issue was discussed at length at Village pump policy earlier this year (Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 42#Wikipedia:User page and IP's). Ultimately the consensus decision was to update WP:USER to explicitly state "both registered and anonymous users" for the benefit of people (like me) who were improperly differentiating between the two. It was also discussed in part again last week on WP:AN (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive150#IPs removing their block templates while the block is active)

I could notify all of these editors who were involved in this discussion if necessary, but it looks like consensus is for keeping this sentence, and a huge effort was taken to build this consensus on a variety of pages. Ikip (talk) 11:51, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the consensus you assert. Furthermore, in view of your edits to my Arbcomm case ([16], etc etc), I have no faith that you are acting neutrally here. So I've re-reverted your change William M. Connolley (talk) 12:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Please do not start an edit war on a policy page, especially as a skim of the links provided suggests good arguments an probable consensus. If you think this needs further discussion, maybe an WP:RFC, fine. Non-trivial policy changes should be discussed before implementation. Rd232 ^talk 12:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

As others have noted, concensus on this issue was again re-confirmed in 2008, and the section in question has been stable for 494 days. — Kralizec! (talk) 13:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but anons don't "own" talk pages and have no right to blank them. Don't see any reason for such a line in policy as is under dispute here. When reverting vandalism, I check the anon's talk for previous and recent warnings. If it has been repeatedly blanked, that just makes it more difficult to determine if a vandal block is needed. In my experience a good chunk of ip edits are either vandalism or tests, and to say vandals have the right to blank warnings on "their" ip talk pages is absurd. Vsmith (talk) 17:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Two years ago, I felt the same way and made many of the same arguments. However community consensus has always been very clear on this issue. Ultimately two specific points persuaded me to change my views: (1) edit warring with an IP in their own user space is the height of futility, and (2) treating IPs like second class citizens is not only unsupported by any policy, it goes against the very spirit of Wikipedia. — Kralizec! (talk) 17:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Vandals aren't "citizens" and ips aren't either unless they have a dedicated ip. A typical ip user is just a "passing number", how can an ip address used by numerous anons have a right to blank warnings on "their" talk? And edit warring with an IP in their own user space... it isn't their space. Yes, edit warring is futile - protect the talk to stop the blanking vandalism. Still absurd. Vsmith (talk) 21:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, protect the talkpage but only after a block, that way they won't be treated as "second-class citizens" until they proved themselves to be detrimental to the project. There should be an automatic talkpage protection with every ip block, temp or indef, and automatic unprotect with every unblock. Then if they decide to change and want a clean start they still have the option of blanking their old warnings and block and start fresh, if they continue to vandalise then the cycle begins again i suppose, but it's always possible to check the edit history if you want to learn of long-term vandalism history. -- œ ^™ 00:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)