The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Delete; Wikipedia is not a free webhost. If these users ever plan on returning, their user page being deleted will be the least of their worries. If this particular MFD had not been posted on ANI, it would not have had the radical change in consensus from what the other MFDs on similar user pages resulted in.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 06:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC) reply

Valueless user page of a user who registered an account and only made one edit: creating his or her user page. The user has made no other contributions to the project in any sense. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 22:57, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

Note to closing admin: This page was canvassed somewhat obnoxiously at WP:AN, so please take that into consideration. Thanks! -- MZMcBride ( talk) 06:22, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete - User has not edited in over a year, userpage is not helpful to the project. Tiptoety ^talk 23:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete Per Tip. MBisanz ^talk 00:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete - Userpage is not helpful to the project. -- Suntag ( talk) 01:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep. This is ridiculous. I fail to see why we need to bother to delete it. Userpages are not supposed to contain a value in itself. There is no present policy based reason to delete. The message we do not want to send to inactive users is: if you make only one edit, your edit will be deleted due to inactivity. We want to retain users, not delete their userpages. Syn ergy 03:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep changing my support to keep. Synergy and DGG have convinced me with their comments, and I'm not comfortable with these MfDs being used as a rationale for a large scale blanket deletion. -- Ned Scott 03:18, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • Not that it really matters, but Synergy indicated to me (albeit, off-wiki) that he was convinced that these should be deleted, but didn't feel like editing the five subpages. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 03:58, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • Delete I guess. We could probably save a lot of time and just make this a group nom next time. -- Ned Scott 05:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
    • My estimation is that there are about 15,000 of this type of page. ;-) -- MZMcBride ( talk) 08:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
      • I was just talking about the ones you've directly nominated. -- Ned Scott 02:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
        • Holding off on my delete support for now. -- Ned Scott 02:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
      • In the past, when pages have been nominated as a batch, e.g., the "secret" pages, people have difficultly separating the pages in their votes, so they end up voting 'keep' for the entire collection, which is a Bad Thing. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 03:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep at such cases. Keeping these things is more welcoming to people who may just like to tip their toes in. Usually they cause no problem, and if they do, usually problem content can be simply removed to fix the problem. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 09:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • You're not concerned that Wikipedia may be acting as a permanent web host or pastebin for these people who have contributed literally nothing to the project? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 09:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
    • I looked again, and at the full history. The information stored is barely greater than in information required to access it. So, no. I do, however, suggest blanking the information, just in case it is being used for some external purpose (perhaps google realted) and pasting a welcome notice, in the hope that the newcomer will engage. I am certainly not concerned about storage space or bandwidth issues. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 09:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
      • It isn't about bandwidth or storage space issues. It's about whether or not these user pages (of people who haven't contributed anything) further the goal of creating a free online encyclopedia. A year-old test edit clearly does not. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 15:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
        • You are certain that someone who makes a test edit, and then nothing for a year, will never return, or if they do, with not feel at all unwelcomed by the deletion of their userpage? You don't have to be wrong very often for the damage done to outweigh the problem you are trying to solve. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 11:38, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
          • For someone who doesn't know the difference (such as a new user), would blanking be any different than deletion? – Black Falcon ^{( Talk)} 15:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
            • Up the top of the page is the "My contributions" link that is easy to find, and won't work if contributions are deleted. Being able to review one's own contributions is an important early thing to learn. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete them all: Worthless; per nom and per the above. - Rjd0060 ( talk) 17:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• keep and have no more such nominations. The time, effort, and resources spent on them is more than they take to keep around indefinitely. There is no harmful content besides the very most trivial identification--this is no real sense using us as a home page --people who want such typically have much more to say about themselves. For those people who do use them as home pages for social chatter, they can be removed. I'm not concerned that those who do have not used them that way in a year might use them that way. These pages aren't worth the clean--up costs. According to the [nom| User talk:MZMcBride], these have been nominated as test pages to explore what to do about the 15,000 or so other pages of this sort. It's time to stop wasting not just computer resources, but human ones, on this. And some day perhaps a user will come back--if someone visited once, they may visit again--if only 1% do that's still 150 contributors who should have welcome notices waiting for them, not the discouragement of finding their single trace here removed. DGG ( talk) 20:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • While I don't see any real value in a lot of these pages, and I could see some of them as being used for vanity type reasons (a quick way to just put your own "entry" to wikipedia, without doing anything), I pretty much agree with what you've said. -- Ned Scott 02:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete - We should delete all user pages of inactive users with little to no mainspace edits. VegaDark ( talk) 02:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Comment How are these pages being detected? We likely have users who've made an entry who are active on other Wikimedia projects and have left a note here. I know I've done that on a few other of our sister projects, and that would show up simply as someone making one edit and to their userpage. We also have doppelgänger users who make one edit to redirect a userpage or just leave a note. These might be minor concerns, but I feel they're just as valid as the rationales to delete such pages. Is there really an issue here, or are we just making more work for ourselves in the long run? -- Ned Scott 02:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • The two cases you listed would be included the list as they meet the criteria. However, that's exactly why no script or bot can be used on these. While I'm sure you've created pages on other projects, I don't you've created your userpage with just '''Bold text'''. ;-) If these pages are to be deleted at all (and past versions of prod and past MfDs suggest that that's certainly a possibility), they would have to be reviewed by an admin. If they say something like "User at zh.wikibooks" or have a link, they would obviously be kept. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 03:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
    • So the actual deletions would be done "by hand"? Hmm.. that does seem reasonable. I'll think about this. -- Ned Scott 04:39, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete in principle (per nom, Tiptoety, etc.). I support setting up a process or a narrow set of criteria to handle these types of pages, but I agree with DGG that they should not be brought to MfD (a few "test" nominations are fine, but these types of pages are not worth the effort of a full MfD; in addition, MfD can't handle 15000 separate nominations). – Black Falcon ^{( Talk)} 15:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply

comment eh? Where will it end? There must be loads of user pages like this. Is this going to be done to any older userpages where the editor has made few/no other edits? I don't quite agree with it as the user may come back, I know they could recreate it but even so. It seems a bit needless and rude. I don't have strong opinions on it, I just wondered if this is going to be a new standard practice? Sticky Parkin 21:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply

Comment. Sticky Parkin is very wise. I agree with everything said. Should we expel any user who does not edit after 90 days? Delete their user page, close their account, make their password invalid? No. Let's welcome everyone. 903M ( talk) 04:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete on 29 March 2012. Us highly active Wikipedians tend to lose perspective and think six months without editing means "gone forever". But there are plenty of Wikipedians who chip in an edit or two every few months, and to them a year off is merely a slightly-longer-than-usual break between edits. Having said that, I agree with most of the arguments for deletion. I think five years is a reasonable time frame for purging stuff like this. Hesperian 04:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • These aren't users who chip in occasionally. These are users who have never contributed. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 05:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Wrong venue. If you want to propose a change to Wikipedia:User page, go through the usual process. At present our policies allow userpages for inactive editors and don't clearly forbid them even for never-active ones. Chick Bowen 04:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep being a registered user and having a userpage is not contingent on editing. Page is harmless and deleting would be rather against the open image that wikipedia tries to give off (with varying success). Brilliantine ( talk) 04:49, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep per Sticky Parkin. I wanted to cite WP:PAPER but apparently that doesn't apply to userspace. Still, what harm does it do to keep a few extra bytes of what appears on the surface to be pointless content? We're not dealing with anything even close to WP:NOTMYSPACE here. Hbent ( talk) 04:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • Contributing nothing other than a page on yourself isn't MySpace-esque behavior? Really? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 05:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
    • I understand your point, but I really think that there are more important issues to deal with. We have many, many userpages that are nothing but overengineered vanity cruft, yet you're going after a page with less than 80 bytes of actual content. Hbent ( talk) 05:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
      • So pretty much WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS? :-) -- MZMcBride ( talk) 06:22, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
        • I honestly don't see how OTHERSTUFF applies here; I perceive that comparison (huge, slow vanity pages by established editors vs. one or two lines of text from unestablished editors) as flawed. WP:AGF whenever possible. I didn't start using a login until very recently, but I made many edits as various IPs over the years. Are you saying that when I decided to make an account, if my only edit so far was to create a userpage that said "hbent is the shizzle mofos and dont you forget it," that it would be deletable? Hbent ( talk) 06:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
          • Absolutely. If it's been a year (or more) and you haven't found one typo to fix, one word to correct, one _anything_ to improve the project, then your declaration that you're a "shizzle mofo" doesn't need to stay around. And my point about OTHERSTUFF is that it doesn't matter if other pages (larger than 80 bytes) exist, we should deal with these. (More of a direct response to "more important issues," really.) We're not a pastebin. People shouldn't use us as such. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 07:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

The thing is this wasn't WP:MYSPACE, the person only wrote a sentence on their userpage, they didn't cover it with bling or glorify themselves like a myspace. The page itself is entirely within policy, as is a user starting with this edit. To some people a year seems a long time, but it really isn't. Sticky Parkin 13:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Keep And just NOINDEX all user pages. Any possible problems solved so we don't have to make sure 3,000,000 users are current with their membership fees. rootology ( C)( T) 06:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
  • Except every DB dump and SQL query still includes these useless pages.... -- MZMcBride ( talk) 07:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
    • And last I checked it hurt nothing and nobody. Don't we have things that matter to do like write articles? Trivial tasks and issues like this are so far down at the bottom of the barrel the dead fish in the barrel can't see them. :) rootology ( C)( T) 14:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete, we don't need to keep the (real or imagined) birthdates of non-editors around indefinitely. Kusma ( talk) 06:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep Terrible precedent. Nothin gained by deleting it, nothing much gained by keeping it either - hug waste of time bring it up in the first place. Viridae ^Talk 08:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete While I understand the concerns of some people here, I do think that Wikipedia is not a free webhost. If this user has not done a single edit to the project, I see no reason to keep his user page around indefinitely. User pages are a facility allowing our editors to talk about themselves, not an free personal page everyone is entitled to if they don't contribute (or I suggest we move all A7-bio to the creators user page). -- lucasbfr ^talk 12:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• keep- just adding because I haven't explicitly !voted yet. Sticky Parkin 13:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep.We have no idea whether this user is editing or not. Many editors register, but routinely edit from IP. Why bother logging in, having to dig up that password or request it, just to correct a typo? I wouldn't do it, if I were inactive for a while and couldn't remember my password. Later, and it might be years later, when I found time and inclination to do serious work, I'd get the password (or maybe start a new account). My mind is boggled by a MfD for a page like this; the cost to the project of all these editors commenting is far, far higher than the cost, in every respect, of keeping the page. If we want to automatically delete user pages due to no activity for, say, a year, we should announce this at least a year in advance of starting to do it. The decision being attempted with this MfD should be made as a policy decision, not page by page, or else ... how many pages with this little content and this little activity do we have? And then we could close MfDs like this immediately; indeed, if the policy were clear, and it called for deletion, the pages could be speedied, bot-tagged, and only debated if someone objected. But I see no reason for deletion: yes, we aren't a web host, but a single line with your birthdate? Again, there would be better ways to deal with that problem if it's real. And we should make this decision deliberatively: there are excellent arguments here, and if we continue with business as usual, we then have to write and read the same arguments again next time, it is horribly inefficient. -- Abd ( talk) 13:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep I don't see any reason to delete this. It doesn't fall under the what not section of wp:user and editor might come back. No harm on keeping this. Garion96 (talk) 21:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.