Because the sandbox talk page is frequently vandalized, and because this is a larger issue, I'm posting this here. I'd like to know whether I'm alone with this position. Currently, the Wikipedia Sandbox features 5 links to "experimental projects": * Hangman * Chess * Go/Weiqi * Checkers * Poetry Ever since WikiChess became popular and accepted on Wikipedia, the sandbox has turned into an incubator for new "wikigames". The problem with this is that, as long as a page is a subpage of the sandbox, it is very difficult to delete it, because it is regarded as "legitimate playground." On the other hand, once a game has found a sufficient number of players, these players are all likely to vote "keep" when the game eventually and inevitably creeps into the Wikipedia namespace, as has happened with chess. Therefore, the sandbox has become an incubator for a potentially unlimited number of wikigames which are almost impossible to get rid of once they've become popular. While there's nothing wrong with some harmless games, I strongly feel that such games need to be limited because: 1) Eventually, these gaming activities will attract users who do nothing *but* playing games, and therefore use our donation-sponsored hardware effectively as an Internet gameserver. These users can exist outside our normal community framework, potentially causing problems when they interact with the rest of the community and the site. 2) A couple of wikigames don't make much of a difference, but once there's 10 or 20 popular ones, the constant edits to these pages will start to clutter up Special:Recentchanges. 3) The Wikipedia: namespace is meant primarily for policies; an abundance of gaming-related pages complicates browsing and searching. 4) The more visible these activities become, the more they become a reflection on our project to outsiders. I'm not arguing that any existing wikigame activities should be suspended -- that would be an exercise in futility, as anyone trying to do so will be shouted down by the existing player community. No, my suggested solution is this: All subpages of Wikipedia:Sandbox should be deleted. There's no need to have any "experimental development" pages. Users who want to conduct non-game experiments can use user sandboxes for this purpose. If someone wants to start a new wikigame, they should start it in the Wikipedia: namespace, where it will receive a much more intense assessment right from the start. If a game started in the proper namespace survives VfD, then it may very well be fun or useful enough to exist. In other words, I would strongly argue in favor of shutting down the sandbox as a VfD-resistant incubator for games which distract from the purpose of building an encyclopedia. There is value to wikigames as entertainment and as an artistic effort, but there's a separate wiki dedicated to this already -- http://games.wikicities.com/ -- and I feel that our own gaming related efforts should be limited at best. Regards, Erik