Wikipedia talk:Userspace abuse

Proposal 1: To MfD each 6 months

This is the method currently in use by Calton.

Any userspace that contains promotional material and belongs to a user with no edits outside their userspace (excluding attempts to put promotional links to their name in articles) can be submitted to MfD after 6 months provided the user is warned on their talk page.

Discussion

• A fine idea, but a shorter time-frame should be considered. IMHO, one month should be sufficient unless there is some mitigating factor. Doc Tropics 16:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Agreed, but I'd recommend as little as one week. Notice the multiple limitations - no useful edits outside userspace, and promotional material, and even then there's another week to debate the deletion. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:21, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Yes, I often err on the side of caution; a one week "deadline" followed by a week of debate does seems sufficient given the limitations above. Doc Tropics 19:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I concur with the one week. Six months is far, far, far too long. Crystallina 03:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• What difference would this proposal make? As it is right now, today, user page can be submitted to MFD any time for any reason. Adding a rule is just instruction creep. BigDT 00:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The point of a rule is to have an easy standard instead of an individualized process

But I've seen many start a page and first do some real editing a few weeks later, so perhaps the time to start with would be 2 months--after 2 months i would trust a bot to do it--earlier it needs a human to verify.DGG 03:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• I would say a one week warning and if they continue after the MfD, a sysop can block them. -- Selmo ^(talk) 05:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposal 2: Expand speedy deletion criteria

Currently, we have speedy deletion criterion U2 about nonexistent user which states user pages of users that do not exist can be deleted. We also have a criterion against encyclopedia aritcles on non-notable people (A7), but neither of these criteria handle promotion in the userspace. They should be expanded to include the following:

• U4: "Self-promotion. Any userpage that is only used for advertising or self-promotion which belongs to a user with no contributions to the project outside their promotional activities.

Speedy deletion criterion G11 about commercial advertising should be expanded to also include userspace material.

Discussion

The "G" in "G11" stands for "General criteria", which apply across all namespaces. No proposals are necessary. Uncle G 14:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• Concur. I shoot resumés and similar on sight. Others should too. --Improv 16:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• comment - some of us lowly editors are more than a bit reluctant to go messing about with Userpages because they are often perceived as being held to different (lower) standards than mainspace pages. While the interpretation of these policies may be clear to more experienced wikipedians, I think that a specific clarification like this is useful and informative for less sophisticated users (like me). If the criteria are not actually expanded, perhaps some rewording would resolve the issue? Doc Tropics 17:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Doc Tropics, you've been around for about half a year now, right? It might not hurt you to be a bit bolder in removing things that are clearly inappropriate. I understand your concern that userpages are normally held to a lower standard -- that's true (they don't need to be NPOV, for instance, although avoiding being incredibly offensive/divisive is still wise). Using a userpage to run a business, to house a resumé, etc, these are things that shouldn't be given any tolerance. If you want a policy to feel comfortable, I have little objection, but it's important to note that we're not a "rule of law" society, and policies only go so far. Use your judgement, and if you get shouted down by enough (or the right) people, back off - doing things that way helps the project a lot more than waiting for policies. Note that generally bad userpages can be blanked or deleted -- if they ever had non-bad content, it's probably better to blank so users can fish that stuff back (or fish it back for them). Take care. --Improv 18:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification Improv. I'm a holy terror when it comes to stomping out linkspam in articles and putting Speedy tags on blatantly promotional articles; given your comments here I feel comfortable pursuing similar actions against " blatant advertising" on userpages. Adding a whole new group to the list of spammers who already hate my guts won't faze me in the least : ) Doc Tropics 19:35, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Doc, um ... you may be interested in knowing that Improv has been "shouted" at quite a bit for "removing things that are clearly inappropriate": October; November. I wouldn't recommend you follow that advice too rashly. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to think that I haven't been rash since the last time I wandered through Poison ivy, but there is often an honest difference of opinion in how policy is interpreted and enforced. My personal practice is that if there is any reasonable doubt, I discuss rather than delete. It's only in blatant cases that I pull on my spam-stomping boots, but then, I do so quite gleefully. This may point to character flaws on my part, but I find great satisfaction in putting the smack-down on attempts to use this project for personal profit. Doc Tropics 20:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• Disagree strongly. G11 goes both too far, and not far enough to be used for this. Let's see what it says: "Pages which exclusively promote a company, product, group or service and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic."
  • Too far: Wikipedia:Notability (pornographic actors)/Referenced is a page I made specifically to promote Wikipedia:Notability (pornographic actors). Don't know if a guideline is more a product or a service, but it's clearly something of the sort. Should it be deleted under G11?
  • Similarly, User:John_Reid/Brag is specifically intended to promote the user for suitability for Arbcom, a service the user is campaigning to be able to carry out. Not to single out John Reid, several other Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2006/Candidate_statements mention brag pages. Surely we don't want to delete those?
  • Not far enough: User:Jamesahn/Autobiography is clearly not encyclopedic, but it doesn't promote a company, a product, a group, or a service. It's just nonencyclopedic personal promotional nonsense. G11 doesn't apply.

AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• User:John_Reid/Brag is a page related to Wikipedia activity and thus entirely appropriate. User:Jamesahn/Autobiography might be if this isn't his only edit, but those clearly show why I wanted expansion/rewording of the current speedy criteria. It doesn't fully address what should be deleted. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal 3: Userfy with care, avoid the problem

With established users, a little self-promotion on a userpage is acceptable. We've been less strict with userpages compared to articles. However, userpages should generally focus on editorial work. Before userfying material, editors should investigate a user's contributions to get an idea of their intention. If they haven't done any edits that were not promotional in nature, the material should be deleted using the G11 and A7 speedy deletion criteria instead of being userfied.

Discussion

• As a NP patroller, I can't say I like this proposal. It would take a lot of time to check people's contributions before doing anything, which would be annoying. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• I don't think it takes any more time than checking the edit history of an article during CSD patrol. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• In most cases, a quick glance at the Contrib History should suffice to indicate whether an individual is an active contributor or not. Actually checking the content of the edits probably isn't necessary. Doc Tropics 22:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Well, considering that I'm already one of the few that bothers to put {{nn-warn}} and the like on peoples' talk pages, I doubt it would get done very much. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 22:48, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal 4: deletion if user has no useful contribs

This has been suggested before (and disputed before) but it should be listed here for the sake of completeness. There is something to be said for either PRODding or speedy deletion of any and all User and User_Talk pages by a user that (1) has little or no actual contributions to the encyclopedia, and (2) hasn't edited recently (to avoid newbie-biting). See also Template_talk:Prod for an ongoing discussion on the matter. (Radiant) 10:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

This proposal has just been implemented. MER-C 13:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Related topic

If this discussion results in a change to policy or guidelines, templates like {{ConflictOfInterest}} (formerly Vanity), {{Userfy warning}} and {{Badbio}} will need to be updated. (Particularly if the consensus is for eliminating long autobiographical user pages, and/or if speedy deletion is endorsed.) Otherwise, we could see a lot of this sequence...

1. User puts up mainspace article about his non-notable self
2. NP patroller deletes it, leaves note saying "put it on your user page"
3. User puts it on his user page
4. User page gets deleted under new rules

... which would be a bit WP:BITEish. FreplySpang 13:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

MfD will always be necessary

To me, there is no way we will ever expand the CSD to cover all that can be safely deleted; this is a case in point. I think the new guidelines are quite good for tackling the majority of user page deletions currently at MfD - junk left behind from departed self-promoters. But there will be a rare minority of regular mainspace editors who breach convention and keep inane crap in userspace; those are the ones we've to warn and then MfD. Kimchi.sg 15:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but it would be helpful to be able to speedy the left-behind stuff that should clearly go so it doesn't have to be run through MfD. Just because MfD will still be required doesn't mean this isn't helpful (not sure if that was your point or not). —Doug Bell ^talk 18:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be good to take the (many) obvious cases off of MFD (to prod or speedy) and leave the (fewer) difficult cases on there since that's what MFD is for. (Radiant) 08:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe this is a stupid question, but can't one already speedy a userpage under the terms of G11? If so, what purpose would this policy serve? -- Thesocialistesq/M.Lesocialiste 13:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That is only for advertisements, this applies to using Wikipedia as a personal website, posting personal photo galleries, etc. No company, product, or service might be involved at all. —Centrx→talk • 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

What is userspace abuse?

I think that something that needs to be qualified is exactly what constitutes abuse.

• Attack pages (already speedyable - no changes needed)
• Advertising (already speedyable - no changes needed)
• Myspacing/decorating their userpage, but with few or no project contributions - In this case, I don't really like a CSD because it's no exact standard. Plenty of very active users have very elaborate userpages and nobody would suggest deleting them. If someone has 100 contributions and all of them are adding userboxes to their userpage, ok, delete it. But what if they add 100 userboxes to their page and have 5 contributions to articles? 50 userboxes and 10 contributions to articles? 50 userboxes and 50 contributions? The current system - MFD - is appropriate here as this is a subjective standard.
• Image galleries - if someone uploads a photo or two of themselves for their userpage, that's permitted. But what if they upload 10 unencyclopedic photos that are used only on their userpage? 100? (My personal opinion is that Wikipedia is not free webhosting and there should be ZERO images that are not used in article space, but obviously I'm in the minority.)

BigDT 00:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The point of this discussion is to set clear narrow criteria. It is for people who have no useful contributions to the article space. That is either no edits at all or only edits to promote themselves or their business (which effectively means no edits, because those should and will be reverted). - Mgm|^(talk) 11:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The last two are very deletable under Wikipedia is neither myspace nor a free web host. MFD used to handle them but now you won't see them there because they will be prodded instead. MER-C 05:03, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

• I've visited MFD last week and they still handled these, because prodding is for articles, not userpages. There is a proposal linked to this page for prodding, but last time I checked it was still a proposal. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

  Check again. It went live a couple days ago. —Doug Bell ^talk 11:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

  So, should we see if that resolves the problems with userspace abuse? Note also that userpages can be brought to MFD, and there's no six-month delay rule anywhere in that process. At any rate it would seem there's no longer an urgent need for this proposal. (Radiant) 17:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

With regard to the images, what about WP:FB? That would be deleted because really, none of those images are encyclopedic. However what I think is if there are multiple images with no articles or no real use they should be deleted. If it seems that they are using WP as a webhost then delete. That's what I think. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 12:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

There are people who will put an image in user space intending to use it for an article, just like many do with text--it's a sandbox sort of use, and such use should be encouraged in preference to over-hasty edits in main space. So I think this could apply only to people without other contributions--but they are handled above. DGG

There's nothing in this that can't be dealt with already with a bit of common sense. Horrid instruction creep. Grace Note 10:09, 16 December 2006 (UTC)