User talk:Calton/User Page Abuse

Comment

The only time I remember that I thought userfication was appropriate while doing new pages patrol was when I userfied the page now at User:KuwarOnline - the user had created it at the title MyProfile. Ironically, RHaworth was the one who deleted the cross-namespace redirect I created in the process, and caused an edit conflict with me when I tried to post a long message to User talk:KuwarOnline explaining the situation. The user hasn't edited since that time.

Another reason why these vanity pages should stay in article space is that there are more options for handling them; they can be speedy deleted, sent to proposed deletion, marked for cleanup/verification/whatever, and can go through the normal editing process. In contrast the only deletion process for user pages in most situations is Miscellany for deletion, people are generally more wary of editing pages in userspace, and on normal user pages stub/cleanup/verification tags are usually added by the user as a joke. Therefore, userfication is not only bad because it hides the page from the casual wikipedia browser while still being indexed by search engines; another important reason against userfication is that it stifles the course of normal article development. -- Graham87 09:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree somewhat. Idealy, userfication should only occur if it is 1) requested by the author and the author is a contributor with other contributions or 2) There is some chance that the userfied article could be reasonably moved back to article space. However, we already have serious biting problems with our deletion process and this would aggravate that. It is therefore more reasonable for any admin who chooses to userfy something to add it to their watchlist. If the relevant user does not edit at all for a few months or makes minimal edits, then bring it up for miscelaneious deletion. Maybe a guideline should be written about this? JoshuaZ 14:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

For actual contributors with an actual history or intent there's a lot of wiggle roonm. These aren't -- almost all of the ones I looked don't edit past their initial attempts to add their articles or to insert references to themselves into other articles. I don't think the pages as constituted belong at all. Continuing to something with an 80-90% failure rate strikes me as a counterproductive, so while your proposal has merit, it's still cleaning up after a mess, not preventing it in the first place. --Calton | Talk 01:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'd forgotten I'd created such a page as you suggest a few weeks ago: User:Calton/Userfied pages to watch. --Calton | Talk 01:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Response by RHaworth

To Calton

• Whilst I would not go so far as to accuse you of incivility or a personal attack, I do wish you would tone down your language. This is not a matter of life and death. If you had discussed more calmly when you first raised the subject on my talk page, I might have acted then.
• Typical of your "hand-waving" approach is your remark about {{deletedpage}}. Of course I know about that template - I have applied it often enough - and it has little relevance to the matter under discussion here.

Actual response

A vanity article is still a vanity article in the user namespace. The WoW (world outside Wikipedia) is unlikely to appreciate the difference that "user:" makes. Search engines crawl user space. I cannot recall ever going back to check whether the victims of my userfication have become active editors.

I have therefore abandoned the practise of userfying and will use the (Main) tools of speedy, prod and AfD. Of these, I prefer prod because it gives the author time to userfy themselves or copy off and it is not as humiliating as being told several times in an AfD that they are non-notable. In addition I shall use, and recommend others to use, where appropriate: {{userfy}} (on the article itself) and/or {{badbio}} (on the author's talk page). Both of these so that we "don't bite the newbies" too badly. It is more friendly to give people positive suggestions than just say "go away".

My userfying was very successful at getting articles out of the (Main) namespace with less than 2% being "disputed". I suspect that a slightly higher proportion of prod's will be disputed but I expect it will still get rid of a reasonable proportion of the vanity articles that I spot. -- RHaworth 19:17, 3 September 2006 (UTC)