This is an essay on the deletion policy. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This page in a nutshell: Stupid copies of web pages are sometimes created, and should be deleted.

Stupid copies of web pages are sometimes created in Wikipedia, by copying and pasting the web page into a Wikipedia page, which is often a user page or user sandbox page. One of the ways in which the copies are stupid is that highlighting and copying a web page and pasting it into a Wikipedia page captures only the text of the web page, and not the formatting. The copy of the web page displays the text in a format that may be readable, or may be difficult to read, but is not how the designer of the web page intended it to be viewed. Sometimes creating the stupid copy may be the only activity on Wikipedia that the originator engaged in. Another editor, viewing the stupid copy, will see that its history is that it was created by a user with very few edits, several years earlier, consisting mainly or entirely of creating the stupid copy. It is not obvious why the user created the stupid copy.

If the stupid copy is of a random web page rather than another Wikipedia page, and the originator has otherwise not been an active editor, it can be tagged for speedy deletion as U5, misuse of Wikipedia as a web host by non-contributors. If the originator has made other edits to Wikipedia, so that the stupid copy is not U5, there are other bases for deleting the stupid copy. The copyright violation detector, [ [1]], may be able to detect the page that the stupid copy was made from. In that case, the copy should be tagged for speedy deletion as G12, copyright violation. (Even if very few sites on the Internet take copyright seriously, Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously.)

Sometimes the stupid copies are of Wikipedia pages. U5 does not apply to copies of Wikipedia pages. However, the user page guidelines also prohibit copies of article space pages. Copies of pages from article space are not permitted for several reasons. They fail attribution. They are redundant content forks which reflect a previous version of the article but are not updated as the article is updated. They do not fall within any of the criteria for speedy deletion, but such copies should be nominated for deletion at Miscellany for Deletion, and will be deleted by consensus after seven days.

Sometimes copies from article space are copied and pasted from the Wikipedia source rather than from the screen. In that case, they preserve the formatting of the original article, which is not quite as stupid as stupid copies that omit formatting, but is still not permitted. Such copies should also be nominated for deletion.

Occasionally multiple stupid copies of the same page are created by different accounts at approximately the same time. They were likely created by the same person from multiple accounts, which is sockpuppetry. If the stupid copies were created within the past three months, the accounts that created them should be reported as a sockpuppet investigation. Editors who abuse Wikipedia by creating stupid copies are sometimes editors who abuse Wikipedia with multiple accounts.

There may be at least two questions about stupid copies, one of which cannot be answered, and one of which can be answered. The question that cannot be answered is why users create stupid copies. It isn't necessary to answer that question in order to answer the question of what to do about them, which is that they should be tagged for deletion using the appropriate deletion processes.