Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Esperanza/User Page Award

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany 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 Speedy delete; overwhelming delete consensus. --May the Force be with you! Shreshth91 04:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Esperanza/User Page Award

This page is part of the negative side of Esperanza culture, in which well-meaning experienced users have inadvertently given new users the wrong impression of what Wikipedia is for. I claim it contributes to this culture in two ways:

1. This encourages users to spend too much time "prettifying" their userpages, rather than adding content to the encyclopedia. While it is true that the winners of the award tend to be solid Wikipedians, many other users see this award and may think that proffesional-looking userpages are part of the path to respect within the community. This is, of course, false. It's true that userpage editing is a good way to learn about Wikipedia, but polishing to such a high level does not help the encyclopedia and should not be actively encouraged.
2. WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. All the judges and procedures and dates are silly. If you like somebody's userpage, why not leave him or her a nice note with (if desired) a picture of a star or a cookie or whatever you like? Why all this rubbish to judge what's the best?

In short, nothing good is encouraged by this award, and several bad things are. Therefore delete. -- SCZenz 22:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. A complete waste of time to me. --Majorly (Talk) 23:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. The sooner this goes the better. If a bloodless MFD is the best way to achieve this, then so be it. WP:NOT a place for social networking: this has no relation whatsoever to the encyclopedia. Moreschi 23:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Comment-the discussion isn't really over yet, I'd appreciate you looking at my proposals on the overhaul page before deleting. DoomsDay349 23:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I attempted several days of dialogue with Esperanza members about whether this page might have some use I can't see. It has become clear that no answers that I consider satisfactory are going to be presented, therefore there's no particular reason to wait. Your remarks seem dangerously close to saying that it's better to let Esperanza look after its own "internal affairs"; in fact, this is false. The Esperanza organization doesn't own any Wikipedia pages; pages hosted by Wikipedia that negatively impact encyclopedia work are the business of all Wikipedians. There will, of course, be time for discussion by the entire Wikipedia community on this page. -- SCZenz 23:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Ok, sorry if that came out wrong, but that's not what I was insinuating. But I hardly saw any Esperanzans here and think that you really should consider our input before deleting the page. Comment there is certainly appreciated, and I would really like withdrawal of this until after the Overhaul has been performed. Thanks. DoomsDay349 03:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Meh, actually, I think I've lost faith in my own ideas =P. Sorry if I seem like I'm just backing down out of fear, but I think it's best that we delete this now and, if the Esperanza community decides that we really need it we'll carefully revise and bring it back...though I highly doubt that will happen. DoomsDay349 04:01, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Dev920 (Please vote delete here.) 23:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm surprised at this sort of blatant vote-pumping. Please remove this from your signature. - Che Nuevara 23:11, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I thankyou for your warning, but I had already done so. Look, I'm NOT an Esperanzan but I'm being NICE IN MY SIG!!!!OMG!!! Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 23:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Nice is always good, EA or not :) - Che Nuevara 23:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Request withdrawal pending changes. The entirety of Esperanza is undergoing overhaul discussion, which can be viewed here. At the end of the process a lot of material that people find objectionable will probably go. It would show a lot of respect for other editors to allow the Esperanza community to do its own housecleaning. If, after the process is finished, some editors are still unsatisfied, please feel free to bring the issues back here. - Che Nuevara 23:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • See my comments to DoomsDay above. If you want people to "allow the Esperanza community to do its own housecleaning," next time host your pages on another website. -- SCZenz 23:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • There's no reason to be hostile. And I'm very little involved with most of the pages, so please control your use of the second person. I'm simply saying that putting up Esperanza subpages is likely to get tempers flaring again (clearly) and I think that the EA overhaul is a way to avoid a lot of the upset. And avoiding upset is definitely good for the encyclopedia. - Che Nuevara 23:15, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment': If the consensus of the community is that this should go period, then that consensus should be respected. IMO this should not be kept in any shape or form. The need for community consensus at MFD overrides any wish for Esperanza to do its own spring-cleaning - or it certainly does for what I suspect will be a non-controversial deletion. For the Coffee Lounge, maybe, it is different: it will save time and pain if EA gets rid of that in-house. For this, I suspect that MFD is best. Moreschi 23:18, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
      • I am frustrated that you're claiming I ought not to be involved in improving Wikipedia (at this time), just because a bunch of people have put their names on a list and claimed their own pseudo-namespace. I don't think I was hostile at all—simply brief—although perhaps I should not have used the second person. If people are frustrated/hurt/upset that I am trying to improve Wikipedia in this manner, it is because they misunderstand how Wikipedia works; thus I think this will be a good learning experience. -- SCZenz 23:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
        • I think what I'm saying is being slightly misinterpreted. I'm not saying that Esperanza should be allowed to keep articles that the community thinks should go. I'm saying that a lot of these pages are going to be given up or drastically altered by Esperanza anyway, so it would save a lot of time and energy if that could happen first. What's the rush? If, after the overhaul, the community feels that it's still not up to hack, then of course this sort of process can and should go further. But a lot of Esperanza members are still stressed from the recent EA MfD, and people not in Esperanza calling its programs "rubbish", "nothing good", and "the negative side" is likely to poke at some wounds still being nursed, no matter what the intentions of the nominator. I don't see the harm in letting a week or two pass by before coming back to these issues. - Che Nuevara 23:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Esperanza has bad things about it at the moment; I am sorry if me saying so makes people sad or hurt. Anyone who's wounded or stressed over these issues to the point that they need to be left alone for a while should consider taking a wikibreak. I am very fond of being civil, although I'm not perfect at it, but I do refuse emphatically to be too nice to do the right thing. As for why the hurry... well, I couldn't see what progress might be made by waiting, and I thought it would be best for the community to get through this little piece of the issue; this way, Esperanzans can focus on the coffee lounge, where there are more possibilities for reform. -- SCZenz 23:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Turn it into a barnstar and be done with it seems to be the best idea at present. I would like to add that these deletion discussions should really wait a bit, for a couple of reasons. First, it forces a pointless and unproductive dichotomy on us and polarizes the discussion that does take place. If you were to participate in the restructuring discussions you could find useful compromises and alternatives, while by bringing it up for deletion you force a keep/delete decision (or the dreaded no consensus). Secondly it can result in the maintenace of the Esperanza status quo much more easily than discussions. As an example, let's say you nominated the Admin Coaching program for deletion. It receives a keep vote. All the discussion about improving it can now be stopped. Why? The program was kept! You can't renominate it for another couple months without invoking holy wrath, and by then the anti-Esperanza contingency will have gone on to other things, no one but the supporters will care anymore, etc. and nominating it will be a foregone conclusion to keep regardless of whether it has reformed or not. --tjstrf talk 23:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

There's already an award for userpages... Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 23:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Though I find it a little strange that we have to go through an MfD when there seemed to be a consensus to delete (or at least totally change) it here anyway. Ah well. Another edit, another day. Anyway, I have been both a judge and contestant in the UPA, but I think that as User pages don't add anything to the encyclopedia, and the new Esperanza is focused on the encyclopedia almost entirely, this has had it's day. Thε Halo ^Θ 23:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - as a member of Esperanza, I can agree that this probably is one of the most useless of its efforts. However, I do think it would be a good idea to not have any more Esperanza pages put up for deletion until after Esperanza completes its current restructuring. Badbilltucker 23:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment agreed. Seeing as most Esperanza pages seem to be being completely reformed or deleted by Esperanza its self, there seems little point to creating yet more MfDs. Thε Halo ^Θ 23:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment agreed, there should be an opportunity for discussion about reforms. Addhoc 23:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - does not contribute whatosever to the encyclopedic content. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, if users want to give Barnstars for having a nice user page then fine, but doesn't require a special page. Addhoc 23:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this is one of the things that I will agree that Esperanza can live without, seeing as its not encyclopeadic and as stated above does not have enough merit to have its own seperate page.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 23:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete That's what the EA community is saying on its overhaul pages anyway.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 00:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete but with the notation that this was gonna be puree anyway, so this MfD was ... rather extranous. I would strongly advise no more MfD on Esperanza for a little bit until they work out what they want to do. This message from the Deletionist Cabal brough to you by --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 00:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, and a comment and proposal (edit conflict with similar suggestion from, surprise!, Elaragirl) I agree that this is one of the clearer examples of where Esperanza has gone wrong, and for that reason I concur with deleting it. I also agree that it is not up to Esperanza members to dictate either what is acceptable nor when the community can discuss them. However, I don't think there is any urgency to start identifying an deleting these pages as long as there is earnest discussion by the people that participate in Esperanza regarding serious reform. So I also agree with the concept of a short moratorium on putting the individual pages and projects of Esperanza up for deletion. I think it is far better to have the people that are seemingly emotionally wed to these aspects of Wikipedia be given at least a little time to come to their own conclusions regarding what is useful and what is not. Note that from a purely logical standpoint, this doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm trying to understand it from the perspective of the people involved and I think we can afford to allow them this small accommodation. So I propose that we put no more pieces of Esperanza on the chopping block until at least one week following the closure of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Esperanza, which would be 20:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC) —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 00:51, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete per above Will ^{(Tell me, is something eluding you, sunshine?)} 00:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Abstain - seek review of all userpages and userboxes on Wikipedia - if indeed as a number of people as above have suggested and userpages add nothing to an encyclopedia, especially the "pretty" ones, than as much as I don't want to suggest this, then at the very least, there should be a review of having userpages and userboxes on Wikipedia as a matter of urgency, at worst, ALL userpages on Wikipedia should be placed for MfD. I can't suggest that strongly enough. The majority of pages I come across (maybe even my own) are pretty much social networking pages, and not relevant to contributing to Wikipedia at all, including userboxes in user space. --tgheretford (talk) 01:58, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Nice statement =) Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Can we think of any additional things to pile into this same mess while we're at it? Banning sig colour markup sounds like a convenient target, let's pile those into this same MfD... One issue at a time, please, MfD is not built for wide-scale policy changes. --tjstrf talk 02:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
      • I shall make a full and detailed explanation elsewhere later today (more than likely at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and a link to there from Wikipedia talk:User page) as to where we go regarding userpages, userboxes, and yes, indeed signatures too. Its just the concerns of a number of people regarding how the projects (like Esperanza) and userpages are going are becoming harmful to Wikipedia. --tgheretford (talk) 02:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Good idea, just make sure you post the link here so I can find it.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

• Can't delete systems

  You won't magically remove the underlying system by removing the front end.

  In fact, it might be unwise to remove pages representing systems at all, as they are a part of wikipedia history.

  Unless you enjoy having history repeat itself every ~6 months ;-) , consider marking the page as rejected or unused instead.

  Kim Bruning 01:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nomination. In response to Kim Bruning above, this is a minor Wikiproject process page that is irrelevant to Wikipedia itself. It was never established by the community, so it's not historical. If you'd like to keep an archive of deleted process pages, feel free to start a process museum off-site. :) There's nothing wrong with the underlying system (awards), so deleting this process is quite sufficient. —[admin] Pathoschild 02:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete- per my above statements, I think it's best to delete this now. DoomsDay349 04:01, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete- And it saddens me to say this, I've spent a lot of time watching this page and messing around in my own page as a result. Time I should have spent adding to articles. A barnstar should be enough recognition for a nice userpage. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 04:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

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.