[WikiEN-l] Deletion of user subpages

[Jimmy Wales]

Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> 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.

I think that "bringing the project into disrepute" should be interpreted
very narrowly.  One of our great strengths as a project has always been
our healthy tolerance of legitimate discussion and debate about various
internal matters.  If someone notices a trend toward abusive admins, and
writes a respectful and thoughtful page about the issue, I think we
would be very unhealthy indeed if we just deleted it for that reason.

(Indeed, overzealous policing of the user space content for alleged
infractions would itself bring the project into disrepute.)

The sorts of things we should care about in user space are various kinds
of hate speech and advocacy: pro-Nazi pages, pro-pedophilia or 'child
love' pages, pro-violence, racist pages, things of that nature.

Criticism of the project itself seldom rises to the level of hate
speech, although of course sometimes it does.

--Jimbo



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