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). 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? 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. 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? I of course do not expect there are simple answers to these questions, but I've been really quite disturbed over the last week by the way some people have been voting to delete (or even speedying) pages in the userspace which in my mind were not a problem at all. (On speedying: I think if a reasonable number of people do NOT think a page is an "attack page", it should not be speedied under the "no attack pages" CSD. I am happy to "trust admin judgment" but in ambiguous cases, if we trusted the judgment of all admins, we'd end up with endless wheel-warring.) The reasons given were poor, in my mind, and people were labeling criticisms (however misguided or incorrect) as "attacks", criticized one page for creating "factionalism" (because it was trying to organize people to support a policy change, which would inevitably create some disagreement), and voting down pages because there was "no need for them" and they weren't "useful to the encyclopedia." This dismays me. Not because I think my user subpages, of which there are a few, are ever going to be on the chopping block. It dismays me because reaching into what others perceive to be "their territory" -- and yes, I know that nobody "owns" any pages on WP, that WP is not a webhost, etc., but it cannot be denied that people feel a little proprietary about their userspace, and that this is not entirely discouraged -- is a rather presumptuous thing to do, and I think should only be done in cases where it is CLEARLY warranted. I think the "bad blood" created by nominating someone's stillborn Wikiproject for deletion is completely unnecessary -- if it is not "doing anything", then just ignore it! Perhaps this makes me a little more old-fashioned "if it ain't your business, don't mess with it", but I find it really hard to stomach when a group of people can vote down someone's user pages, often for reasons which have NOTHING to do with any of our user page guidelines. Personally, I don't care if people want to write little half-baked essays relating to Wikipedia policies on the subpages. If someone wanted to write a little essay about why free content is dumb, let them do it. Who cares? It's not going to change the world, it's not going to sink the project (and if it did sink the project, then that indicates far bigger problems than one little essay). We don't have any "right to free speech" on Wikipedia, but I don't think people are out of line to expect that they have the ability to criticize things they don't like, as long as they don't cross over that fuzzy line to being "attack" (I think accusations of "attacks" should be reserved only for those things which are *clearly* personal attacks, and not just personal criticisms). I think our user page policy needs an overhaul, and I think we need to have better guidelines for the deletion of pages out of the user space, because I think it is a place where feelings of others can get pointlessly trampled on. Who cares about feelings? I do. Not because I'm a bleeding-heart sort of person -- because I believe that Wikipedia runs on good will. People will only contribute well when they feel wanted and appreciated. The people who are happy to contribute even when they feel they are not wanted are, for the large part, pretty problematic (most POV-pushers know they aren't wanted, for example, but have decided it is their "crusade"). By all means -- edit the article namespace ruthlessly. Delete like crazy, if there is reason to. But I think we need to be a little more careful with the user namespace, and develop some explicit guidelines which say as much. FF