[WikiEN-l] Deletion of user subpages

[Kirill Lokshin]

On 5/19/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >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".

Conversely, if the nascent WikiProject would be quickly deleted once
moved into Wikipedia: -- in other words, if its goals are not among
those for which WikiProjects are intended -- then there's no reason to
prolong its existence.  This is particularly true for projects that
are nothing more than anti-Wikipedia rants with a signup sheet.

> 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 recall a (fairly recent?) ArbCom decision mentioning something about
userpages that "bring the project into disrepute"; is there any reason
not to extend this criterion to user subpages?  The denizens of
WikiTruth and Wikipedia Review and their ilk already have the entire
rest of the Internet to spout their garbage; there's utterly no reason
to legitimize it and help spread it by hosting it (however
inconspicuously) on a top-20 site.

-- 
Kirill Lokshin