I know of the cases you mean, I nominated various ones.
On 5/19/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
G'day Fastfission,
From my
reading of [[WP:USER]], it seems to me that a subpage in the
user namespace which
expresses opinions about Wikipedia or admin
behavior, or one which is the beginning of an attempt to organize
users towards one goal or another (a pre-born Wikiproject), should be
totally legal, irregardless of whether other users think the idea is a
good one or whether or not it "takes up resources".
And yet, at [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion]], there have been a
number of cases lately where things are nominated for just this
reason. People seem to vote without any consideration other than
whether they think the subpage is "a good idea" or a "waste of
resources" (of course, the MFD votes often taken up almost exactly the
same amount of database space as the pages in question, but let's not
let logic get involved here).
It sounds like our descriptive policy is lagging behind actual practice.
I guess it needs updating.
(And xfD is not a vote. If the reasoning behind a "vote" is lacking, it
can and should be ignored. This applies even in the case of (imagine
we're on AfD now) 20 "NN D"s and 1 "Keep, he was the World Champion
in
nude pipe-smoking three years running, represented Canadia in the World
Nude Pipe-Smoking Championships, and was Leader of the Conservative
Party in the UK for a period in the 90s".)
There are two things I think we should do here.
One is to try and
hammer out if all user subpages must be "useful to the encyclopedia"
(as many claim they must, when they are on the chopping block), and,
if so, ADD THAT to the user page guidelines. If we DO want to go down
that path, we should come up with some clear cut guidelines for what
counts as "useful". Must it be useful for writing articles? For
organizing research? For telling others about yourself? Does something
which facilitates the community count as "useful", even if it does not
directly apply to article writing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:We_need_a_policy_to_deal_with_policy
Define, and define, and define. Broad definitions are tyrrany. We
can't let random people decide what "useful" means!
For example, I have a page on my subpages which
is a list of all free
images I have drawn for Wikipedia. It serves no direct purpose except
maybe for me to feel good about my accomplishments, and to encourage
others to feel good about them too. Does that make it "useful"? Maybe.
Yes.
Since I'm not getting paid monetarily for my
contributions (which take
hours to create, mind you), a little ego stroking is a good way to
make sure that I (and others) keep working at it. So in that sense,
the page is very "useful": it guarantees that I will keep coming back
and spending my valuable time on this project. (I of course do not
mean this to refer only or even directly to "me", but mean it as "the
hypothetical editor".)
But where do we draw the line? Is a page which criticizes the
implementation of Wikipedia policy "useful"? Is a page which
criticizes the policy outright "useful"? What if it makes blanket
statements about the actions of "admins"? Does that go too far? Where
does "useful criticism and disagreement" end and "personal attacks"
begin?
If you're talking about one subpage I've seen, it ended when the user
said "X, Y and Z admins are ignorant morons who don't know copyright
law. I say we fight back and pepper our userspace with purdy pictures
we have no right to use!" (in a somewhat less inflammatory fashion,
admittedly). Core principles are not negotiable, and attempts to
organise the community in revolt against being an encyclopaedia, being
NPOV, respecting copyrights, etc., should not be tolerated.
<snip/>
--
Mark Gallagher
"What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
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