Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Userbox debates

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[edit] opposing only attack templates

And now we see the peril of opposing only "attack" templates. If something can evade this by expressing support for the opposite, it's also no good. POV-userboxes are the problem, to a larger degree than just crap like {{user opposes fried chicken}}. -- nae'blis (talk) 00:57, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Actually, I'd say there is a substantial difference. In the long run, it's probably best for the encyclopedia if all the POV userboxes go (and certainly their categories). But templates that express hate, disgust, disdain, or rejection have the added problem of being obviously offensive and inflammatory to people of an opposite persuasion. Boxes for "This user supports the Democrats" and "This user hates Republicans" are both bad, but the latter is substantially worse in that it damages the collegial community Wikipedia strives to develop. So I do think there is substantial reason to get rid of the attack templates pronto, and focusing on the others later. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:05, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Ehhh, you're right, they're not the same, but they're both harmful (IMO). You said it much more eloquently than I could at the time (I'm trying to phase out of this debate, in the hope that it will come to resolution on its own, but...) -- nae'blis (talk) 17:07, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • "Delete all attack templates"...but stating "This user is an Atheist" isn't an attacking userbox and yet it got deleted. It's not dividing either because the real world is actually full of diversity, if anyone has noticed. And so is Wikipedia. And if the Atheist template got deleted, then why didn't the Catholic or the Muslim template get deleted? I could speculate more on what the deleter himself had in mind but I don't believe in personal attacks. --Thorri 13:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] userbox code

Here's another reason why this is entire debate is silly:

This user does not support the United Nations.




is not now and never will be up for deletion. Hell, you'd have a hard time deleting

This user passionately dislikes Jimbo.




Why? Because they're not templates. They're just boxes. Because, instead of using {{User J1mb0 1s teh sux0R}}, it says:

<div style="float: left; border: solid #6699ff 1px; margin: 1px;"> {| cellspacing="0" style="width: 238px; color: #3a5791; background: #FFFFFF;" | style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #6699ff; text-align: center; font-size: 14pt;" |[[Image:Jimbo at Fosdem cropped rounded.png|43px]] | style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; line-height: 1.25em;" | This user passionately dislikes '''[[Jimbo]]'''. |}</div>

So, if people want to state an opinion that the Highers-Up of Wikipedia don't want to be a template... they can just do it this way. Not to be melodramatic, but getting into a fight about user boxes will just push their use out of templates and into lines of code. I'm going to respect WP:POINT, but if I were to put that second user box into a new user page and just leave it there, do you think it would ever get noticed? Ever? Nah, once it's not a template, there's really no way to efficiently police it. The boxes won't go away, and instead, users who want to express their POV in their user space instead of in the encyclopedia will have a reason to resent admins, and will have a point to prove about, and a method to go about, sticking it to the man. m Talk 01:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S. for the record, Jimbo is not teh sux0r. JDoorjam|m Talk

Actually, having everyone use raw code would solve most of the actual problems with userboxes. Notice, for example, that you would lose the (rather problematic) ability to use Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:User J1mb0 1s teh sux0R to find a group of like-minded anti-Jimboists for your planned takeover of Wikipedia. ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 02:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I would have to agree. I support userboxes, but feel that they should be substed, rather than transcluded. Also, userbox categories should be given the ax - they are not entirely useful to any encyclopedic project, but they are exceptionally useful to vote-stackers, POV pushers, and trolls. Substing userboxes and nixing associated categories would go a long way toward solving problems with them. In addition, you are afforded a degree of protection on your userpage by using subst - if the template is vandalized, deleted, or simply nominated for TFD, your userpage will not be affected by the change. --Blu Aardvark | (talk) 03:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I think substitution would be good, but you not only have to nix user cats, but neutralize the images as well. Otherwise Special:Whatlinkshere/Imaeg:Userhatesjimbo.jpg will allow the same 'negative benefits' of vote-stacking. Having to use the same type of image on positive, negative, and/or neutral (interest/expertise-type, the only non-Babel ones I support) userboxes would satisfy almost all of my objections, personally. I don't have a problem with people expressing themselves on their userpage, I just think the bumper-sticker, groupthink mentality is not helpful to the project. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:07, 13 February 2006 (UTC)



This entire discusssion simply reminds me of the first valuable thing I learned back in college government classes: the only power bureaucrats have in a bureaucracy is to say no. The same is true here: administrators who have decided to wage war against user boxes have the power to speedy delete them, and then people have to fight tooth and nail just to get them undeleted for discussion. The three arguments I keep hearing are:

  1. "Userboxes can be divisive", which is true, I suppose, but so what? Retaining the ability to delete truly offensive userboxes, like {{user pedophile}} (which was, rightly, deleted), can't we just take the really offensive ones down while leaving Template:User impeach bush or Template:User hates puppies?
  2. "Excessive templates are a burden on the servers," except I keep asking everywhere I go whether this is actually true and I never get a straight answer; and
  3. "People could use whatlinkshere to find other ne'er-do-wells and join forces with them!" which I suppose is true, except no one ever has a documented case of that happening, and people don't need categories or userboxes to do that. The same "Army of Wiki-Darkness" could be raised simply by putting or or in, and doing a whatlinkshere on those, instead. Are there other compelling arguments besides those? JDoorjam Talk 23:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)


Well, your third point isn't quite correct (although the cases I'm aware of revolve mostly around user categories, rather than userboxes). For example, during this discussion, a user spammed the members of Category:Roman Catholic Wikipedians in an attempt to sway the outcome. Granted, the stakes were not particularly high in this case; but I see no compelling reason to make this sort of thing easier, particularly when the only benefit of doing so is a little extra eye-candy on userpages. —Kirill Lokshin 01:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe the "strain on the servers" argument is tripe. The developers have said that there is no significant problem there.

JDoorjam writes "Userboxes can be divisive", which is true, I suppose, but so what?" Well this is not the place for that. We're here to write an encyclopedia, not fight political battles (and definitely not battles against administrators, the arbitration committee, Jimbo Wales, etc). You write that we could delete templates that you regard as really offensive but not those that you don't. It doesn't work like that--of the two templated you give as innocuous examples, one of them is presumably supposed to be a call to impeach the President of the USA. What possible use could such a template have to Wikipedia? We're supposed to be describing political affairs, not using the pages of Wikipedia to wage political battles or to promote our favored political causes.

Kirill Lokshin has the Catholic Alliance of Wikipedia affair slightly wrong. A category was used, true, but that category was virally transmitted by a userbox. Also I'd hardly say that the stakes were low in that case, but that's a matter of opinion on which reasonable people can differ. --Tony Sidaway 01:24, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, my example was the "Catholic Church of Wikipedia" rather than the more nefarious "Catholic Alliance of Wikipedia". Of course, it could be that the same userbox+category combination was used in both. —Kirill Lokshin 01:26, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem with having to use code is that not everyone knows how to code an entire userbox. For those who don't, they would need to see the code they need to copy. It would have to be listed somewhere. Censors would object to it being listed at WP:UBX so they'd request it be in some userspace. But who's userspace? Well, they choose a person's userspace. The user accepts, but then they don't want some of the userboxes they don't agree with to be in their userspace. So people would have to go to several different userpages to find these codes for the userboxes. In short, require that people code their own userboxes, and you unleash Pandora's Box of Chaos. --Revolución (talk) 19:35, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree that it's very elitist (as in leet) to say "let them use code". I know basic HTML, and yet I never would have learned how to read code if this usebox war hadn't forced me to. Why? B/c I'm not a programmer, and for me this stuff is HARD to learn.--M@rēino 14:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If a box is to be used rarely, perhaps the easiest way to build it would be using a generic template like maboîte - a box into which the user specifies the background colour, icon/text and body text as parameters. For instance, "this user lives in an igloo on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River" as a userbox may appear on my Désencyclopédie userpage as {{maboîte|bleuvert|nord|Cet utilisateur vient du [[Saint Laurent|rive nord]] et vit alors dans un [[iglou]].}}. That gives MyBox, blue-green background, 'north' in the icon space, "this user comes from the north shore" as body text. By changing the three parameters, a user can have the box display anything, keeping just the basic overall format.
    I realise we prefer to avoid using meta-templates in other often used templates ("this (1)-related article is a stub...") to reduce server load, but if a box is only on a few userpages it may be a sensible option. --carlb 02:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please use tfd-inline!

Please don't use {{tfd}} when nominating a userbox for deletion, it is highly disruptive. Use {{tfd-inline}} instead.
Here is a code sample, just paste this into the box after the text: {{tfd-inline|{{subst:PAGENAME}}}}
Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 01:54, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion moved from "Global notice" section

How did you go about deciding that? --Fang Aili 18:20, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Mark Sweep has unilaterally decided to silence all debate about this issue by blanking the DRV discussion. Can someone please help? --God of War 19:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I will leave a note on Jimbo's talk page. This has gone far enough. --D-Day Somebody talk to me. Please somebody! Anybody! 19:18, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The willingness of certain administrators to allow the expression of biases which might lead to a more neutral encyclopedia is gone. Good luck on recreating that. --James S. 08:52, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Please stop removing global notices, even if you don't like them. Mike McGregor (Can) 08:52, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] move

Thread moved from project page:

It's not a common occurence, it just started a day or so ago with some admins deciding to delete whatever boxes they wanted. See my userpage if you want more info. The Ungovernable Force 10:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree, all proposed deletions shoul go throught Templates for Deletion but certain power hungry administrators have just gone crazy, this is the end people, welcome to the wikipedia police state. --Horses In The Sky 14:32, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess it's a warning in future to have policies, even ones dictated to by Jimbo, carefully worded so they don't have humungous ranges in interpretation. enochlau (talk) 14:43, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Getting people offside

This is just the comment of one user, but these kinds of comments make me worried: [1]. One issue that hasn't been discussed is that the whole-scale deletion of userboxes that express a point of view will put a large number of users offside. If a userbox is innocuous and doesn't offend anyone, but expresses a point of view, the argument that it does not contribute to encyclopedic content is wrong to say the least: it keeps people happy, it keeps them here writing articles, it gives them something that makes them feel part of Wikipedia. If someone wants to put {{User likes tomatoes more than carrots}} on their user page, let them. enochlau (talk) 15:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The issue here is the misuse of templates. No one's stopping someone from expressing their views on their userpage; the objection is to templates. Mackensen (talk) 16:04, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Misuse of templates how? Templates are considered perfectly viable for use on userpages, so I do not see why templates created for userpages are a particular problem. "Proper use of templates" is no more than an opinion, and should not be used to rule the debate. In any case, I think you will find that the majority of the anti-userbox crowd is in fact opposed to POV on userpages. —Cuiviénen (Cuivië) 16:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I doubt that very much. Misuse of templates is clearly not an opinion, as there's a valid CSD category for such templates. Please go read up on all this. Thanks, Mackensen (talk) 17:22, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

This whole issue has just made me more and more angry. Wikinfo looks better and better each day these admins go on userbox speedy deletion sprees. --Revolución (talk) 21:37, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. This makes me very sad: all our effort, it seems, is now on bloody user boxes. Whatever happened to the good old days of editing articles?! - Ta bu shi da yu 13:37, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving policy

As the debate page is getting extremely long, and an archive was established, I thought it best to also establish an archive policy so we don't find ourselves debating when to archive debates. I said debates should be archived after 48 hours of inactivity (which I don't think should include repeated additions by a single user, in case that comes up). If anyone has any objections let's hear 'em, but I think that's pretty reasonable given the usual speed of debates on this page. Regards, JDoorjam Talk 17:47, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

What about closing and archiving debates after 5 days like most high traffic deletion debate pages? Thryduulf 21:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. JDoorjam Talk 15:07, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Hm. Well, I was going to update the archive page with the oldest debates, but someone locked it. Could someone unlock it, or move the debates older than five days over there? JDoorjam Talk 15:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disgrace

This whole thing is an absolute disgrace, if you are going to destroy userboxes the express an opinion or merely state that they are a member of a certain group of people (like atheists!), then why do you allow people to have user pages at all?!? Why allow barnstars?! WTF is going on here. Jooler 02:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Barnstars reward effort, userboxes are usually added to identify a person. There is a difference. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not a disgrace, it's just a difficult adjustment period while we go back to Template: being for serious encyclopedic content only. Userboxes will still be around, they just won't be templates ... you'll copy the code and put it directly into your user page. --Cyde Weys 02:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

But what is the point? Tell me that? What is the point other than making it harder for me to find all my other atheist buddies. I can find people who can speak English to the same degree, and people who own cats, and people who like tea just as much as me, but not fellow atheists. Why's that? Jooler 02:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Because there's really no good reason for you to be able to easily find "fellow atheists" (or fellow cat owners, for that matter). In fact, the ability to easily find others with similar views on religion has already been abused to stack debates (see the examples a few sections above). —Kirill Lokshin 02:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
So what is happening here? Are ALL userboxes going!? Because if the rule applies to one is MUST apply to all. You have to get rid of all the En-1 Fr-2 etc boxes too. And at the end of the day what IS the point of deleting them, is is simply to stop people from stacking debates? Jooler 02:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, yes, it does look like most userboxes are going to be going away. Or at least, they're going to be subst'ed or moved entirely into user space. Improv is an avowed evangelical atheist, so don't think his motives in this issue are somehow anti-atheist. He just wants to start by deleting the religious userbox that his motives can't be questioned on. The others are not too far behind. --Cyde Weys 02:37, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
(after edit conflict) I really don't see how finding people who speak a certain language can be misused (but I'm sure some enterprising person will go ahead and prove me wrong). It's not clear which, if any, userboxes will remain; but, for obvious reasons, the ones that match the usual lines of debate (political persuasion, religion, and so forth) are being deleted first, as they present the greatest opportunity for abuse. —Kirill Lokshin 02:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
You should read Talk:Río de la Plata/name Jooler 02:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
If the problem with userboxes is that they allow social networking of people of similar beliefs to the point that debates can be stacked..
Why not just remove the feature that adds users to that userbox's category listing of all other like-minded users?
Simple software change (should be anyway), and would allow users to express themselves without using userboxes to locate other similar-minded folk. (Did I use the word 'use' enough times yet?)TKarrde 02:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Because the Special:Whatlinkshere feature provides the same effect even if no explicit category is used. —Kirill Lokshin 02:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
This is just the stupidest thing ever. It's like saying, yes I can put a sticker in my car window saying I have a Baby On Board, but I have to make it myself and it has to be a different design from everybosy else's. Jooler 02:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
A (slightly) better metaphor: you can put a Baby on Board sticker on your car, but it can't have an RFID chip that allows you to instantly find anyone else in your city with the same sticker. —Kirill Lokshin 02:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
because that would be BAD! Jooler 02:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
That's actually kind of an irrelevant metaphor. Please remember that metaphors can't be used to prove anything. They're actually a very weak argumentation technique. They should only be used to help explain something that has already been proven using more rigorous logical means. --Cyde Weys 02:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't see what relevance at all free expression on an automobile has to do with Wikipedia. Please read up on WP:ENC. We are here to build an encyclopedia, nothing else. You have no rights to have little pastel boxes, and if they are causing trouble, they will be done away with. --Cyde Weys 02:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Anbd the trouble that they are causing is what?! Jooler 02:47, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess you haven't been around long enough to know, but userboxes have caused lots of trouble. Some people have used them to round up sympathetic votes for various deletion activities. And other userboxes are just plain offensive and divisive and make it very hard for some people to assume good faith. I was once editing an article on the Iraqi war, saw some possibly POV edits, went to the user's page, and saw some userbox about shooting pacifists. Now you tell me how I'm supposed to vet his edits with a fair eye after I've been infuriated by something like that. --Cyde Weys 02:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I've BEEN around since 2001! So if that user has the same info on his page but not in a userbox is would have made you think differently would it? Jooler 02:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, it would actually require reading the page, rather than just glancing at the shiny boxes ;-)
On a more serious note, having an easy-to-find catalogue of templates for every possible opinion has probably encouraged people to use them, even if they would otherwise not express such opinions, or express them in a less provocative manner. —Kirill Lokshin 02:59, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I think the bottom line here is that Jimbo does have the power (and the right, since it's his website) to do whatever he wishes with Wikipedia.. but that by doing so he's likely to drive off an awful lot of the productive members of the Wikipedia community while attracting the ire of those we'd rather not see (i.e. trolls, vandals and script kiddies). Exercising legal rights probably isn't in the best interest of the project as a whole, and this comes from years of experience on online forums both as an administrator and as a normal user, so I've seen these kinds of things from both sides. But I guess he's not likely to take advisement from what amounts to a random person on the internet. It's just regrettable that it had to happen to a site like this, which I happen to admire a lot. Eh. You win some, you lose some, I guess. I'll still stick around and do my part to attempt to preserve and improve Wikipedia, but I can't guarantee the same for anyone else. TKarrde 02:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I suspect that, once the shooting stops, most people will have forgotten all about this in a few months. The continued fighting and uncertainty is probably causing more damage to the community than a straight Jimbo-imposed deletion would have. —Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
The bottom line is that this isn't going to stop people putting little pastel boxes on their pages. If I create and atheist box in my sandbox and lots of other people decide to link to it, that isn't my fault, what difference would it make from being in my sandbox and being elsewhre. there is not point in delting these boxes because whatver the aim it is not going to stop people expressing their views on their user pages or establishing communities of like minded people. Jooler 03:03, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
If that's the case, then what'll likely end up happening is the abolishment of userpages as a whole. I can see this heading towards a day where all we get is our unique usernames ;) TKarrde 03:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Huzzah! Then we'll all be free from... I mean, protected from, eh... no, that wasn't it. Undivided! Yes, that's it! Because we can't express any individuality, we'll all be happy and united, with a single, neutral point of view. And in unison, we will sing the Jimbonian National Anthem. ($10 Wiki dollars (subject, obviously, to reversion) to the first editor to write a Wiki anthem of at least two verses in length.) JDoorjam Talk 03:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we have an anthem yet, but there are some hymns lying around that could be used in a pinch. —Kirill Lokshin 03:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
And now I get BLOCKED for editing Jimbo's page to remove his POV boxes. 88.111.81.220 03:30, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of Jimbo's comments added to top of project page

This would be a lovely thing, were we allowed a "serious discussion" before the userboxes are arbitrarily terminated en masse by an admin or admins convinced that their definition of "polemic" or "divisive" must be correct... RadioKirk talk to me 01:49, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be similarly wonderful if we allowed a "serious discussion" before hundreds of additional userboxes were created after Jimbo asked for discussion. Trödel•talk 02:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

And, this is a surprise? Seriously, think about it:

  1. Mass deletion;
  2. "Okay, let's discuss this.";
  3. Mass creation;
  4. "Bite me."

Number 1 pretty much guaranteed the rest. I'm hardly shocked... ;) RadioKirk talk to me 03:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Neither am I, nor am I shocked by the new round of deletions - because that is how escalation works. However, I am disappointed that the users that were personally appealed to by Jimbo, and others have not been persuaded and/or not been able to persuade others to take it down a notch. Trödel•talk 03:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Disappointing? Perhaps. Unexpected, hardly. When one starts a "discussion" with brute force and then invites the other side to negotiate, the other side's automatic assumption is bad faith, and correctly so. RadioKirk talk to me 03:37, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Not sure how Jimbo started the discussion with brute force. If you are referring to Kelly Martin's actions - while I think they were made in good faith, I think she would be more judicious if she had to do it over again. Trödel•talk 04:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
No, sorry, I wasn't referring to Jimbo's actions but, more correctly, the irony in that he feels compelled to distance himself ("I have actually done absolutely nothing"), after the fact, from the "brute force" that started this avalanche. RadioKirk talk to me 04:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I've hesitated to add this Jimbo quote, because it is long, and because it's something he wrote in the wiki-en mailing list (February 18), and therefore is not a pronouncement. But I guess it's time:
I agree. The more I think about this, the more I refine my view of what I think is "the problem" with these userboxes. "The problem" is not people's self-expression, the problem is that by having these things in the Template namespace we are implicitly suggesting that these are endorsed by the Wikipedia community, and that plastering a bunch of advocacy stickers on your userpage is the right and normal way to be a good Wikipedian.
One of the reasons we've always been so successful is deep and profound respect for individuality, *mostly* manifested by a willful abandonment of advocacy in our interactions and work. I show my respect for other people's individuality by not shouting about my own worldview, and I admire and respect others who do the same.
This is why I've become more and more convinced that the right thing to do is to take any and all userboxes which don't fit some very very narrow "practical" uses into people's personal userspace. If you want to decorate your userpage with your advocacy for the death penalty and support for animal rights and so on, well, you know, whatever.
I think it's lame, but whatever.
However, that does *not* mean that I am complacent about having these things in a common space which seems to suggest not just "well, whatever" but "here's the thing you're supposed to do!"
If I wasn't such a slow editor, and if I knew how to run a bot, I'd be likely to create a huge massive stir by going through every single template in the problematic categories and edit every single user page to subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go.
Please no one else do this... yet. :)
As we know, though, users are doing this. I personally would have preferred to wait longer to give an educational campaign more time to work, but I also am frustrated by the vehement insistence of some userbox advocates to do whatever they damn please without regard to the welfare of Wikipedia. In any case, if the templates have been deleted, I want them to stay deleted. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 12:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
So, basically, your opinion is, "okay, maybe this, and this, and this should not have been deleted, but they were, so, too bad."? Nice...
More accurately, however, users are not "doing this." Jimbo said he would likely "subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go." The users to whom you refer went straight to deleting, abusing T1 (and the spirit of Jimbo's rant on the polemic) along the way, and abusing the power to destroy templates without ever giving their users the opportunity to have them moved (or move them themselves) into user space. That—the wanton disregard by a handful of admins for Jimbo's apparent intentions (using his own words as the guide)—is the crux of my argument. RadioKirk talk to me 14:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your attention please!

'What would Ta bu shi da yu do?'
The author of this comment has requested that you ask, WWTBSDYD?
Please edit this article in any way to improve it.

Thank you.

[edit] Waste of time?

I'm pretty sure userbox DRVs are a waste of time. I know this subpage is still young, but can anyone point out a single matter that has actually been settled here? Threre are something like 6000 ubserboxes, and at some point it's looking like most of them will make an appearance on this page, and all I'm seeing is an endless argument with no result. -R. fiend 19:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Not endless. 6000 will surely take some time, but we're patient. ;-) Misza13 (Talk) 19:31, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Hey instead of randomly deleting boxes and then sending them through DRV wouldn't it be a lot better to have a firm Policy first? Whatever happened to WP:UBP?--God of War 20:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
    • That's exactly the problem, there's no process for interpreting the law. CSD T1 is way too vague. It's left to the interpretation of any admin who comes along. the other problem is that half the people arguing that a template isn't polemic, and half arguming it is pretty fair evidence that the template is polemical. but half is less than a consensus to delete. It's a mess, and this page isn't solving anything. Maybe we need a supreme court to interpret the law. -R. fiend 20:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Solution?

Personally, I see only one way out of this mess: Notices sent to every single registered Wikipedian with at least one template-space userbox that the decision has been made (and, naturally, Jimbo has to step forward and make it) to remove all such templates. Give about a month for compliance, then begin the deletions, starting with the orphans, until you "wipe them out. All of them." (Yes, the empirical reference is intentional [grin].) Once done, create at Template:Userbox one generic template so people (newbies especially) have the basic code upon which to build their own, and create a Wikipedia:Userboxes page that explains what userboxes are, how to use them, and where to find them (of course, with the destrustion of a central repository in template-space, either one would need to be created in user-space or, if that's impossible, a forum of sorts may need to be created for people to request/offer/trade boxes).

"Many boxen died to bring us this information." RadioKirk talk to me 20:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I would be willing to host any and all of the above mentioned pages on my userspace. I would consider it an honor. And I think this is a good solution. Except for the Jimbo making the decision part, but still, it's fairly acceptable and I feel there could easily be a consenesus for it. Gotta love the star wars reference at the end btw. The Ungovernable Force 17:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you :) RadioKirk talk to me 01:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I kind of agree with that. Not so sure of the mass nuclear deletion part, but it's an idea, and a good one at that. Although for those who worried about screwing up the code, may I suggest Cut & Paste? --D-Day Somebody talk to me. Please somebody! Anybody! 20:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, that was supposed to be the idea in creating one generic Template:Userbox, because once everything's nuked, that would be the only thing to C+P absent finding a box you like on someone else's user page. :) RadioKirk talk to me 20:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Ooooooooooooohhhh, OK. I'm beginning to see the light. Yes, there can be no mass speedies, as there is just one template. WikiProject Userboxes can go on as scheduled. We can display our POV's without them getting deleted(well sorta). Sounds good to me! --D-Day Somebody talk to me. Please somebody! Anybody! 20:51, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that it is an acceptable solution. Actually, Wikipedia needs any solution at all - and in my opinion we have only two plausible solutions left with no middle ground possible: mass nuke (and back to stone age) or keep all. Regarding the central repository - the current gallery maintained by the WikiProject:Userboxes should be kept (but reduced to using only one template) - no use in forcing it into underground. If not in User: namespace then completely off-site but they will prevail - banning it will just be an inconvenience. Misza13 (Talk) 21:25, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I just posted a link to this discussion on Jimbo's talk page. We'll wait and see what happens.

Incidently, a vandal listed his user page up for speedy deletion under T1. Has this discussion gotten to us all?? --D-Day Somebody talk to me. Please somebody! Anybody! 21:32, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Three issues

  1. I think a month's time is too long. If someone spends an entire month logged out of Wikipedia they really won't care about userboxes too much. I would make the time limit something like two weeks, at maximum.
  2. Sending a message to everyone's user talk page might be a strain on the servers and might be difficult to do - as far as I know, nobody has ever sent a message to everyone's talk page. A better solution might be to announce the impending userbox doom in the same way that ArbCom elections were announced.
  3. There should be an instant moratorium on the creation of any new userboxes in template space. This one is essential.

--Cyde Weys 21:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

  1. I'd err on the side of caution, actually; there's a difference between logging on once a month and seeing decrees like this once a month. Consider the average user;
  2. Whatever manner reaches the most people in the shortest amout of time, I'd support; and
  3. Agreed.
RadioKirk talk to me 21:55, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The time given should probably depend on the solution to the userbox centralisation issue. If we decide to keep the current WikiProject:Userboxes galleries then they should probably be prepared first and then two weeks at most should do it (inactive users can be handled manually). Misza13 (Talk) 22:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

How is deleting them all and then letting them all be created back again (which the above seems to allow, I guess I missed something) helpful? Is the idea to have the recreation strictly controlled? And what's the likelihood there would be any less arguing about that? The failsafe solution is for more people to go back to focusing on building an encyclopedia. If everyone had that as the top priority there wouldn't be any userboxes to fight over deleting. - Taxman Talk 22:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they should be controlled, as they've gone on a rampage recently. As of more/less arguing about this, we'll see after officially proposing this as a solution. Misza13 (Talk) 22:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The issue as I read it, Taxman, is allowing userboxes in individuals' userspaces, as opposed to templatespace, where boxes can be used to foment a division or polemic battle among a greater number of users more quickly and efficiently. RadioKirk talk to me 22:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

One more thing - All categories should be taken out of userboxes ASAP, especially before people start subst'ing them en masse. Categories are for main encyclopedic content the same way templates are. One of the reasons for getting rid of the templates is so that users can no longer factionalize and recruit via "Whatlinkshere"; with categories, it's even easier to recruit. So they must be done away with. --Cyde Weys 23:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

This I'll agree with. If userboxes didn't add userpages to categories or facilitate finding others with them so easily it would solve 50% of the problem immediately and there'd be no argument that could be made against that. The rest of the problem is the divisive sentiment in some userboxes, and that's going to require a policy change it seems. - Taxman Talk 14:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I think I missed something - where is this supposed comment from Jimbo about userboxes not supposed to be in Template space? --AySz88^-^ 04:43, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Right here. --Cyde Weys 04:44, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Ah. But it seems to me that getting them out of Template space is more of a band-aid, and the primary problem is the activism in those userboxes. --AySz88^-^ 04:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What about if we put categories for just languages and disabilites(i.e. Asperger's Syndrome) and not political ones? I myself see no problem in categorizing user pages just as long as they don't trickle out into the Article namespace.(Mind you that was an argument for userboxes) --D-Day Somebody talk to me. Please somebody! Anybody! 14:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree 100% with RadioKirk. I hate wasting my time fighting over userboxes. I have zero desire to keep userboxes in the template: space; all that I want is to advance my agenda of encouraging all editors to admit to their personal biases in a standardized, easily searchable format before editing controversial material. I totally agree with RadioKirk, too, that it has to be Jimbo who takes this idea and works out the details. He's becoming more like Betty Crocker or John Bull, a figure whose real-life existence is increasingly questioned by the non-admins.

One final note: CSDT1 is exactly the OPPOSITE of what we should be doing. Offensive and divisive userboxes are the most useful ones. As I've made clear in many forums, no one's political beliefs can threaten me in the least, b/c like the 99% of en.wiki users living in the US, Canada, EU, ANZ, or India, I live in a liberal democracy where political views can't hurt me. I am genuinely offended, though, by users who brag about their personal abilities (I ride bikes, I speak French). I'm willing to put up with those people, though, if they'll let me keep my political boxes. And that's why we need a clearly "off-article" space like a user:box: space instead of the border world of templates.--M@rēino 14:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

  • clarification please?- ok, are we talking about having a single genaric sample of code to be used as a base for users to play with? Would users have to just cut and past from other user pages? Or would it be similar to the current userbox pages, with the template links replaced by the codes to be cut and pasted and a preview of the result of the codes? (ie. "This code" produces "This result (the finished userbox)". If it's the second option, would users still be free to contribute to the page? would users have to just cut and past from other user pages? i'm partial to some form of the 3ed option i discribedMike McGregor (Can) 17:32, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I think it's just one master userbox, where you can add an image with text (both of which you choose). There could maybe be a few master userboxes, since the format of userboxes is not always the same (ex: some have an image on the right side, some have 2 images, and some have text in the image space). I typically make my personal userboxes by just taking the code from one, then changing the image and text areas, and possibly the colors. I think that is what this is about. The Ungovernable Force 02:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with the sentiment here, except that I don't feel that all template should be nuked. The babel templates and the wikipedia-related ones (WikiProject templates and the like) are rather useful, and I think that those should remain as they are. Beyond that, however, I agree. Make a decree, stop any deletion activities to these templates, and after two weeks (in which users should have had plenty of time to add subst: to their boxen), nuke 'em all - except for the Babel and Wikipedia ones. Ever since this mess has started, although I believe strongly and adamantly that people should be allowed to decorate their userspace with these, I have recommended subst: - and indeed, did so to all my userboxes. (I later had to remove some categories when I recieved an email from a certain User:Jason Gastrich in an attempt to stack votes on eight seperate AFD's {although I only voted in one, and that to delete} - the vote stacking issue is real, folks) --Blu Aardvark | (talk) | (contribs) 11:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ...Huh?

Quoting Wales:

I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.

...So essentially what Wales is saying here is that the easiest way for this issue to be resolved is for the pro-userbox camp to give in? Because it would also be pretty easy to resolve this issue if the userbox persecution camp decided to give in. Jeff Silvers 02:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It's really not a matter of "giving in". This is a private enterprise. Our goal is to produce something that is just as credible as Encyclopedia Brittanica and all the rest, only much better. We're taking the steps to do just that, and many areas are already quite good. If one of those companies told their employees they aren't allowed to put bumper stickers up in their cubicles any more, there'd be no argument, or they would be fired, just like that, bet on it. Now here, its true we have a volunteer force, who are not paid -- but that doesn't really change that if a policy comes down from the top, it should still be respected, and I think this is still a remarkably tolerant place, but the whole issue really is keeping the product on a professional level . There are already hundreds of blogs and places in cyberspace for creative expression. Nuff said. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.105.59.116 (talk • contribs).
I would quit if my job said I couldn't have political bumperstickers and such. And not everyone is as willing to bow down to authority as you are (I definetely am not). Many of us think policy shouldn't come from the top and should only come from the bottom up. The Ungovernable Force 02:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Would you quit if your job said you weren't allowed to have political bumperstickers on a company vehicle? That's a better analogy. Michael Ralston 02:19, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Nope. --- main namespace : company car :: user namespace : private office --- That's the analogy. You've got it exactly backwards. Microtonal 02:37, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I've never worked anywhere (in 40 years) where I could have gotten away with putting up political posters, bumperstickers, whatever, in my office. And fellow workers were made to remove the religious stuff they put up. Do you have political and/or religious posters/bumper stickers/whatever displayed at your current place of employment? -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 02:41, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't myself, unless you consider Charlie Patton divisive, but I have colleagues who do. To my knowledge, no one has ever been asked to remove anything from their office, for any reason. Microtonal 03:41, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I must admit, I haven't worked in many places (and I certainly haven't been working for 40 years), but in none of them were you allowed to have anything divisive or POV. I think the analogy of Wikipedia to the workplace is very apt. Wikipedia isn't a playground; we're working to build an encyclopedia. --Cyde Weys 02:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
And if you were asked/forced to remove your sticker, if your boss came in the next morning to a new sticker attacking the policy and/or the company - you would be gone by 9 am. Trödel•talk 03:01, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Wow, that was actually very well said. Which makes me think you're a Wikipedian whose name I would recognize, only you forgot to login. --Cyde Weys 02:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
In addition to what Dalbury said, there's also the issue that a lot of these userboxes are in the main namespace. (As well as the ability, being amply proven in the debates themselves, to use the templates to find people of similar POV!) Michael Ralston 02:42, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Wow, that was actually very well said. Which makes me think you're a Wikipedian whose name I would recognize, only you forgot to login. --Cyde Weys 02:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I think his point is that he doesn't like those userboxes, thus he doesn't want those trying to get them removed to stop, but he does want those trying to keep them to stop. Also, you might want to contemplate the implications of your choice of labels for the sides. (Indeed, you might want to contemplate the implications of sides in the first place.) Michael Ralston 02:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox proposal

I agree that all political, religious and such userboxes be removed. However, I think that any userbox that is relevant to Wikipedia should be allowed to stay. For example, the Wikiprojects userboxes and the "This user is an administrator on the ___ Wikipedia" and "This user is a member of the ____ ____" should be allowed to stay, as long as they are used correctly. These types of userboxes pertain to the original idea---that a Wikipedian could display his/her status on their own userpage. On the other hand, userboxes that state "This user does not support ___" or "This user likes corn" have no reference and give no benefit to anyone reading the user's page. If anything, these userboxes give a bad message of what it is. Unless it pertains information that could inform a Wikipedian reading that userbox about their current status (admin. status, project status) it should be deleted and/or posted on sites that encourage such things (Yahoo!360, etc.), if the person wishes to do so. Wikipedia is still an encyclopedia, although it is online. Everything in it should be appropriate of a paper encyclopedia, and the political and religous userboxes are not. However, userboxes about one's status on Wikipedia have no reason to be deleted.

Please respond if you agree or disagree, as I know that no plan is without is pros and cons.

--Primate#101 05:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree vehemently. The Wikipedia demonstrably isn't a paper encyclopedia, and it shouldn't be treated like one. I don't think it's at all unreasonable or disruptive to allow users to identify themselves on their userpages however they see fit, and WP:USER says as much. I'm not running a blog, I'm not loading my dissertation into my userspace, and I'm not using the Wikipedia as a personal photo gallery. I'm just saying that I appreciate the idea behind Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and find it terribly amusing. The Wikipedia project isn't going to collapse because I've done so, and I certainly don't think that mildly crufty userpages are even remotely close to being our most pressing problem, anyway.
And for the record, I think that this mass deletion of userboxes has been done in extraordinarily bad faith, and that attempting to circumvent the entire dispute by appealing to a vague, arbitrary, and still quite unofficial speedy deletion criterion as justification is cowardly and dishonest. Microtonal 06:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Funny, because Jimbo does have a photo gallery in his userspace with picture of him. As for the top proposal, although I can agree that "this user likes corn" has little value to the encyclopedia other than acting as a way to add to the enjoyment of contributors (which may or may not be a good reason to delete), displaying religous, political and social messages does matter, because it helps alert fellow contributors about possible biases that may crop up in their editing, which makes things more transparent. For example, if you look at my userpage, you might understand why I am so oppossed to authority figures (admins) speedy deleting userboxes based on my political leanings. The Ungovernable Force 02:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, we have "editors" who are putting "self-expression" before any contributions to Wikipedia. Last night I noticed that an editor who was defending userboxes in Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Userbox debates has three times as many userboxes on his user page as he has edits in main space. As Jimbo says, all those userboxes on display are attracting the wrong sort of people, people who are more interested in creating a pretty user page than they are in contributing to Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 11:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there something wrong with self-expression, now? Why is it wrong to exercise some self-expression on a page that has specifically been given to you for the purpose of self-expression? And why should users be judged by anything other than the quality of their edits? It seems completely backwards to attack legitimate users (regardless of the quantity of their edits) for having a little bit of fun while tens of thousands of anonymous vandals, who don't even have userpages and are thus immune to this entire debate, are "expressing themselves" all over the actual articles.
The fact is that not everyone has the same motivation for participating in or using Wikipedia, and any attempt to force everyone to do exactly the same thing for the same reasons is doomed to failure. If Jimbo wanted Wikipedia users to be a collection of faceless article-editing automatons, he should have made an encyclopedia that no one but faceless article-editing automatons can edit. But that's obviously not what we have, regardless of what Jimbo wants. Microtonal 16:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
There's no problem with self-expression. Userboxes are a real specific type of self-expression, and it's not clear to me that any other form of self-expression is under attack. If you want to write a really interesting userpage, explaining who you are in a really creative way, nobody is stopping you. You can put just the right images in just the right places, and use differently colored backgrounds, and all kinds of HTML that I don't even know about... There are so many ways to express your individuality here besides userboxes - hell, you could even do it by means of your outstanding contributions, or your dogged hard work, or your never-failing courtesy and good cheer in the face of nasty POV disputes. I have to ask, are little rectangular boxes, juxtaposing an image and a short blurb, and often linked to a category, really the best (or only!) way you can think of to express yourself? Do you believe that your options are either to have userboxes, or to be a faceless automaton? How sad. Why cast it as a black-and-white, all-or-nothing dichotomy?
See, I object to userboxes because they're intellectually lazy. They encourage too-easy categorization, too-easy summary of complex issues, and too-easy dismissal of opposing views. "You're either a Big-endian or a Little-endian. Your bumper sticker tells me which one!" That's a terrible way to think when you're trying to write an encyclopedia, which I assume everyone is primarily here to do. If you're not, leave. Maybe not everyone has the same motivation for "using" or "participating in" Wikipedia (I call it "editing", or "working on", or even "writing"), but that doesn't mean we don't get to encourage certain uses and strongly discourage others. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:58, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
With all respect, I'm going to object to your assertion that userboxes are "intellectually lazy"—certainly, they can be, but that doesn't mean they are. Personally, I've adapted a few userboxes that came close to what I wanted to say but didn't match precisely. Indeed, were boxen so "intellectually lazy"—at least, as a blanket dismissal—there would be no need for people to create new ones, and on a daily basis, for that matter. Again, the last thing I want is to see userboxes utterly disappear—a user feels a nameless, faceless part of a large whole if (s)he can't point to something with a little pride and say, "I did that and, by the way, this is who I am"—and if that means moving them all to userspace—without mass deletions by rogue admins who can't read "Please no one else do this... yet. :)"—then, so be it. RadioKirk talk to me 05:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm.... Have you ever seen User:SlimVirgin's page? I think that page is kind of beautiful, and certainly expressive. There's no need for SlimVirgin to feel a nameless, faceless part of a large whole. Do you think User:Geogre fails to communicate who he is with his userpage? I think it positively overflows with personality. Neither of them uses any userboxen at all. Still, you're arguing that the alternative to userboxes is some kind of overwhelming uniformity - that's just not the case. Even if all userboxes were deleted (and they won't be), there would still be lots of room for personal expression. Let's not pretend otherwise.
Regarding laziness, or not... exceptions exist, of course. Your argument, though, that if userboxes were intellectually lazy, they wouldn't keep getting created on a daily basis, is badly flawed. Intellectualy lazy crap is created, disseminated, bought, sold, consumed and thrown away on a daily basis on a huge scale in this world. As for there being a "need" to create new ones on a daily basis, I would argue there isn't one. There's just a demand, generated in large part by a few people who think they've found a fun, free webhost. I'm not claiming that you're one of those people; I suspect the 80/20 rule applies here. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:53, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Hehe I realize one can express onesself without userboxes. I'm not saying intellectually lazy userboxes are not created; I'm saying that's quite often not the purpose. I don't know about 80/20, you could be right; I was objecting to the blanket statement that suggested it was 100/0 ;) RadioKirk talk to me 14:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't have a particularly *strong* opinion on the matter in all honesty. Dalbury is right in that perhaps too much time is spent on userboxes as opposed to contributing to useful articles. But it can be beneficial to have userboxes which include automatic addition of the user to categories. For example: "This user is English" can be of use if an editor is wanting to find a list of Wikipedians who are English in effort to collaborate on a specific English-based project or whatever. But look at the name of the templates: USERbox. They aren't really for anything other than to inform others of editors' interests, skills, knowledge, background and hobbies. So the question might therefore be: If we are going to 'censor' (for want of a better word) userboxes, where should we draw the line? --Mal 14:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jean-Jacques Rousseau's General will

This whole debate reminds me of the concept of the general will advocated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher and a father of modern democracy. Rousseau argued that the government ought to be founded on the general will, which is formed when the citizens act as a whole to derive the rules of the community with only a collective interest in the well-being of the community in their mind rather than each individual's self-interest (the private will). Rules thus derived are the best because such rules could not be unfairly harmful to only a portion of the citizens without being so to the whole. The private will is deemed detrimental to the general will; therefore, factions that manifest the private will such as political parties are to be suppressed, so that each individual could ponder on what is the best for the community alone on his own. True democracy only comes with the general will, and the general will is absolute, argued Rousseau: "Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be 'forced to be free'" (Social Contract). Rousseaunian democracy has been criticized by liberal philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin and J. L. Talmon who called it "totalitarian democracy" as opposed to liberal democracy. Admittedly Wikipedia is not a democracy, not even a site to form a community. But just like the citizens of totalitarian democracy are forced to be secluded to be one with the general will when they engage in political derivation, Jimbo's comment above seems to suggest that Wikipedians also ought to be forced to be NPOV when logged on to Wikipedia to edit articles.

Vote-stacking is a problem as much as lobby/special-interest politics is in real politics. But is it so serious a problem as to require a radical measure that forces Wikipedians to be NPOV by depriving means to associate with other like-minded Wikipedians? Wikipedia is not a democracy in that "its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting" as per WP:WIN. Vote-stacking can't be so big a problem if discusssion is reallly being treated more importantly than voting. I don't think it is so bad an idea to invite your fellows to such a discussion when it's over an issue of their common concern because they are likely to be knowledgeable on the subject and could provide valuable contributions. I don't think that even a flame war between two groups of extremists is necessarily worse than a half-assed discussion by clueless third persons. For I believe that the best solution comes fom what Mill called the "free market of ideas." If a subject is an intensely contested one, then it is an intensely contested one. It should not be deliberately left as if it is a non-issue when it is not. Editing an encycropedia is inescapably political and it cannot consist only of completely value-neutral descriptions. Thinking otherwise is guilty of descriptive fallacy. Hermeneus (user/talk) 07:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

But wikipedians CAN still associate with like-minded wikipedians. You can still claim what you want to claim on your userpage - you just have to do it in your own words (and to keep the length from being simply absurd, of course). You can still talk to people on talk pages. And yes, Wikipedia is not a democracy - but if people attempt to manufacture consensus and otherwise engage in activities counter to the goals of the encyclopedia, that's a problem. Michael Ralston 07:54, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Few Wikipedians think that it's ok to "manufacture consensus" in favor of their agenda even when the manufactured consensus is to approve a description that is factually wrong. One calls for help from more versed members of one's group because the one believes that the current description of an article is factually wrong and/or biased, and that the way the article is wrong and/or biased is offensive to the group that the one belongs in. Therefore, the one thinks that the article could be corrected and improved by more accurate and detailed information provided by some fellow members from the one's group. Assuming that all the Wikipedians who chose to belong in a userbox group are so fanatic that they would resort to even guideline-violating means to advance their agenda is itself a biased pov. Hermeneus (user/talk) 08:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but the issue is that there are SOME who feel this way. Not all, not most, not even a large minority. But enough to cause problems. Michael Ralston 08:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
If you start talking about possible abuses, Wikipedia itself could be abused in all sorts of manner. If someone attemted to manipulate consensus by mobilizing his bodies from a userbox group, an admin could invite the members of an opposing userbox group to counter the attempt (if he cannot deal with them alone). Hermeneus (user/talk) 19:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
... thus leading to polariziation, and away from consensus, and otherwise making things worse. I don't think that's even remotely a good idea. Michael Ralston 23:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't lead to polarization. It only manifests the polarization that is already existing in the real world. If a Wikipedia article on a controversial subject happens to have had no polarized discussion on talk page at the moment, then it is only not recognized by the concerned parties yet. But it will be discovered by them eventually as the readership of Wikipedia is rapidly growing. You cannot leave such articles as if they have no controversy forever.
Besides, the "consensus" that seems to exist due to the lack of concerned parties participating in discussion is a false one. The chances are that such articles are at the mercy of a few vocal editors from one of the concerned parties who luckily found the articles first. That is worse than polarization in my opinion. Hermeneus (user/talk) 05:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Not everyone who has a POV feels compelled to push it at every opportunity. And when two people with differing POVs edit, sometimes they can actually cooperate - it really does happen, but it happens far less often when the atmosphere is being polarized and made antagonisitic, by, for instance, people "getting out the vote". Michael Ralston 06:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
There is no guarantee that the article will be left to the two cooperative editors forever. Nor is it possible to deliberately limit the number of editors to a few forever by depriving means of association like abolishing userboxes. I don't think it's right to do so even if possible. Hermeneus (user/talk) 06:39, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
No, there isn't. But if every disagreement were to be automatically ratcheted up to a full-fledged factionalized argument, things would grow very difficult for Wikipedia. As it is, if disagreements start turning nasty, there are processes that can be used to help resolve them - if disagreements rapidly turn nasty, and do so repeatedly, those processess would almost certainly start failing. That would be bad. Michael Ralston 06:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Then we need to come up with a better solution for massive disagreements that are inevitable to come in the future. I don't think deliberately keeping the mass ignorant of controversial issues for the sake of false consensus is the answer. It not only doesn't work but also is wrong. Hermeneus (user/talk) 07:02, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
A good way to reduce POV warring is to set a good eample and educate new editors that Wikipedia is NPOV, and that POV-pushing will not be tolerated. All these "bumper-sticker" userboxes do seem to have given some new editors the impression that POV-pushing is accepted or even encouraged in Wikipedia. I'll support any measure that promotes NPOV in Wikipedia and sends the message that POV-pushing will not be tolerated in Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 12:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
NPOV is not some self-sufficient ideal to be pursed for its own sake. NPOV is important precisely because the world is full of conflicting POVs. NPOV is for the people with conflicting POVs to compromise with a description that is most neutral and thus acceptable to all, so that they will not end up fighting eternal edit wars, just like the freedom of religion and separation between church and state (that make the government "religion-neutral") were invented to put an end to the wars of religion. Depriving the people of POVs for the sake of NPOV is like putting the cart before the horse. NPOV is a means, not an end in itself (unless you are a fundamentalist follower of the cult of NPOV). Hermeneus (user/talk) 14:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
This is NOT about depriving Wikipedians of POV. It IS about eliminating a means that has been used by some editors to organize by POV in order to engage in POV-warring. And, more generally, it is about fighting the idea that POV-pushing is normal and acceptable in Wikipedia, and about encouraging editors to regard themselves as Wikipedians first, and not as members of some group with a POV agenda that is more important than NPOV. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 14:25, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
That's still as absurd as depriving the freedom of expression of ethnic pride and the freedom of association among ethnic minorities for the sake of racial harmony and national unity. Hermeneus (user/talk) 14:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
This is not a political entity. This is a voluntary association. No one is forcing you to give up your POVs. But, if you cannot check your POVs at the door and work to achieve NPOV in articles, you don't have to hang around. Part of working in Wikipedia is agreeing to not push your POV. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 14:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Ofcourse Wikipedia isn't a nation or a god. So I don't see why anyone should be encouraged to regard himself as a Wikipedian first. We don't live for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is just a collaborative project to create a free-content encyclopedia. NPOV is just a means of dealing with conflicting views and nothing more than that. Converting editors to the cult of NPOV isn't a part of the founding philosophy of Wikipedia. WP:NPOV only states that conflicting views ought to be fairly presented, but not asserted. That's fair enough. But suppressing conflicting views is obviously going overboard. That's none of Wikipedia's business. Hermeneus (user/talk) 15:13, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
That's funny, because I interpreted the whole "general will" thing entirely differently. It is the private will that the userboxes are supporting, and in the general interest of the public will, the userboxes must be deleted. In the analogy, the political parties that are inimical to the public will are represented by the userboxes (Wikipedia's version of political parties). Of course, this is only applicable if you accept Rousseau's statements in the first place. --Cyde Weys 08:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
The point is that the "general will" is only a facade of legitimacy for 1984esque totalitarianism. Hermeneus (user/talk) 19:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah that's about all I got out of it too :-) Cyde Weys 02:45, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative Solution

Given that the primary objection to userboxes raised by Jimbo (if not by all involved) seems to the presence of userboxes in template space, why not move them? To where? To User:Userbox. Essentially, move every single page in Wikipedia:Userboxes to User:Userbox and use subpages of User:Userbox to store the userboxes. Obviously there would still be a few userboxes requiring deletion, but the boxes that are problematic beyond simply being in template space are very few and far between, and I think TfD could handle them civilly. (I only use User:Userbox as an example because that page has already been created by someone [other than myself]). —Cuiviénen (Cuivië) 03:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

A lot of the objections to userboxes are more than just misuse of Template: space. A lot of them are absolutely pointless and quite a few are polemical or divisive. Jimbo strongly discourages the bumper sticker mentality that userboxes are leading Wikipedia towards becoming. --Cyde Weys 03:47, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Unless Jimbo wants to act like an actual executive and issue a declaration from on-high, his opinion has no more weight than anyone else's. Microtonal 04:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Except he can and does issue declarations from on-high, and not only that, he does stuff. Check his Special Log. He deletes pages and the like. ArbCom has to refuse to accept any cases against him because they are appointed by him. Saying Jimbo's opinion has no more weight than anyone else's is simply false. --Cyde Weys 04:24, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Can you give a link to ArbCom refutal of arbitration on those very grounds? That would be an interesting read.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

It looks to me like semantics, but sure, why not. The amount of time people wasted dealing with this has far overreached whatever potential and uverified damage might have stemmed from the fact of their existence. If moving somewhere will mean we can finally go back to creating encyclopedia, I am all for it. And yes, they are a misuse of Template space... and nothing more, IMHO.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] G'day

Hello! I'm a userbox. Delete me! I know you want to...
This userbox has been killed.
May it rest in peace.


Uh, is this really necessary? ... aa:talk 17:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] When do these get closed?

Uh, when are these being closed? The archived userbox polls don't seem to be closed at all. Am I missing something? Babajobu 19:20, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Any admin can close them. But it's a lot of work and many are reluctant to dive into this. Let's say someone tallies up the recommendations on the bottommost discussion (as I did at WP:AN) and decides that the boxes in question should be undeleted. If she then goes ahead and performs undeletions someone is likely to delete again and wheel-wars are no fun. But hopefully we will soon have a new policy which most people can live with. Check out WP:UBP if you haven't already. Haukur 14:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Seems to me the most sensible thing at this point is to simply create userboxes in User space, where TfD does not apply. They can be freely cut/pasted, transcluded and substed in User space - and only the most cruel administrator would seek to delete the content of a User page. The arguments against boxes are all fairly weak, as are the arguments for them, but this issue cannot possibly be important enough to waste this much time on. Boxes are supposed to be fun - and since purge #1, they have been anything but. Debate is fine, but not for the sake of debate - I say move the boxes into User space and call a truce. --24.21.224.93 05:58, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The ability to organize a POV mob is a very large problem. Substing userboxes is fine, cut/pasting them is fine, trasncluding them so that someone can use "what links here" to easily seek out people who share their POV on a topic is bad. Michael Ralston 06:06, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Any admin can close on the strength of a deletion review, and only re-SD would be an out-of-process wheel war. StrangerInParadise 09:49, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Doesn't one have the right to" XXX

I've seen this on the peoject page. The answer is yes, but not necessarily on WP - even on user pages. Rich Farmbrough 13:57 27 February 2006 (UTC).

[edit] No Edit Button

Apparently there is no edit button on the userbox debates page. Is it just me, or is this a little bit rediculous? --70.218.15.218 05:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The page is semi-protected. You need to log in. StrangerInParadise 09:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blanking of DrV debates by User:Doc glasgow and User:Pgk

"A page listed for undeletion should remain on DRV for at least five days." -Wikipedia:Undeletion_policy#Restoring_the_page_.28for_admins.29

this and this is Wikipedia:Vandalism and/or serious WP:POINT violations as well as being totally against how DrV is supposed to work, as stated on the policy page... Bob, just Bob 20:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Also please note that User:Grue was blocked for doing the very same thing. I hope there will be no double-standards in action here. Bob, just Bob 20:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

(Personal attack removed) 1) It was not blanked (which is what Grue was criticised for doing - as well as reversing another admin without discussion which I have not done), the debates were properly archieved and noted (see the listed archived where you will find the debates). 1) This is not a WP:POINT. No point is being made, and no 'disruption' is happening. 3) They were speedy closed as bad faith nominations, andthere is a long tradition of admins doing this. The templates were clearly divisive and inflammetory, and were being brought here (6 weeks after deletion) to stir up the usual user box war. There seems to be a mentality amongs some that userboxes should be treated differently from other items, and enjoy special protections, that is not so. --Doc ask? 20:09, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

No one's trolling, with the possible exception of the continual reverts without any attempt at discussion until now.
The whole page was not blanked, but you blanked the sections for both templates. You were not right to archive them according to all policy A page listed for undeletion should remain on DRV for at least five days: Wikipedia:Undeletion_policy#Restoring_the_page_.28for_admins.29
There is no point being made? I find that hard to believe. The templates were deleted in bad faith without any valid reason specified (MarkSweep seems to do this a lot. Reason for deleting: "No" or "gone" etc), and then the undeletion debate is arbitarily removed against policy, presumably because the two userboxes mention the issue at hand and so personal bias on behalf of administrators who don't want the community "rebelling". Bob, just Bob 20:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Please note that Bob, just Bob has been banned indefinitely as a sockpuppet of MSK. --Cyde Weys 01:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy Keep Deleted of Insurgent and Revolution

Why are they listed as "speedy delete keep-bad faith nom" in the archive section when there are only 4 votes (2 keep, 2 delete) on each and they were only up for about an hour (judging by the times of votes)? I never saw them until they were archived, and this page is on my watchlist. What's up with this? I propose they be relisted so that more people can discuss this. Who gets to decide if the nomintation is in bad faith anyway? Since there were two votes in support of nomination, I think this should be given another look. Archived discussion here and here.--The Ungovernable Force 21:22, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

  • They were closed as bad faith listings, which seems pretty reasonable to me. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stuff moved from main page

This stuff didn't seem to be directed at any of the current discussions, so I moved it here.

? A straw poll was held about a policy for user boxes. The poll ended on March 8th, 2006 without consensus.

"It should be noted that use of [userboxes related to beliefs, ideologies, viewpoints on controversial issues, and ethical convictions] is strongly discouraged at Wikipedia, and it is likely that very soon all these userboxes will be deleted or moved to userspace. Their use and creation is not recommended at this time."--Jimbo Wales

"I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.

"Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.

"I think rather than us having to go through a mass deletion (which is what is likely to happen if the userbox fad doesn't go away), it will be better to simply change the culture, one person at a time."--Jimbo Wales 10:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

"The simple fact of the matter is that in this entire userbox conflict, I have actually done absolutely nothing. There have been no decrees from me, no mass deletions, nothing but a serious attempt to engage a wide variety of people in serious discussion."--Jimbo Wales 19:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

"I think it is somewhat problematic to have users pasting bits of cruft on their userpage which make them seem to be engaged in Wikipedia as activists for a particular POV. I think users should realize that having that sort of cruft on their userpage will quite rightly diminish other people's respect for you and your work. But, whatever, if people want to do it, I see no reason to get absolutely draconian about it. However... The current situation with these things being in the main Template namespace, and promoted as if healthy and normal in the Wikipedia namespace, is that they are damaging to our culture. They are attracting the wrong sort of people, and giving newcomers the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian." --Jimbo Wales

*g* Funny isn't it? I keep stumbling across pages ranting against my irrational vendetta and ban of userboxes when basically I'm just saying Everyone please relax a notch or two.--Jimbo Wales 02:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be an understanding that you have given the OK for mass userbox deletion. I think it would be helpful if you could make it fully clear that this is not the case. Everyking 04:40, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't know how I could be any more clear about it.--Jimbo Wales 14:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Prior Discussions (5 January 2006):
Userboxes concerning personal beliefs of users were kept by overwhelming consensus

Keep 185, Delete 28

See Archive: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/userbox templates concerning beliefs and convictions

[edit] Template closure by User:Cyde

I dispute the closure of the following template on this Deletion Review page, Template:User review, by User:Cyde, one of the editors who was most strongly opposed to the template being undeleted (largely because of his personal view, unsupported by any explicit policy, that all userboxes should be deleted) and who participated heavily in the debate, yet for some reason took it upon himself to close the discussion while it was still in full swing regardless, rather than letting a neutral party weigh the results.

There was a majority (though not a large majority) of votes supporting undeletion at the time of the closure, yet Cyde closed it as an (implicit) "keep deleted" with the flimsy explanation "it's been a week" without the slightest explanation at the top of the deletion review, or anywhere else, justifying his interpretation of the vote and/or the discussion (and, if anything, I'd say that the discussion is even less clear-cut than the vote for indicating "keep deleted"). He also, in the process, failed to add decision summaries for any of the closed debates, which are customarily included at the bottom of this page below the "Archive" link, so I had to help clean up Cyde's mess myself and create them (they are now at the bottom of the page, as they should be, though Cyde still hasn't bothered to make one for "Template:User review").

Precedent on similarly contentious issues (some of them very recent and very similarly divided) has shown that the most valuable way to deal with split-down-the-middle-Deletion-Review-votes where the discussion isn't clearly weighted for or against one side is to undelete the template and nominate it at WP:TfD so a larger number of editors can judge the template directly and decide whether it should be deleted or not (since clearly the template's contentious enough that a simple speedy-deletion isn't merited in any case; speedy-deletion facilitates the implementation of consensus, process and policy, it does not override it or suppress discussion, and if a speedy-deletion is so deeply disputed, a simple TfD is probably merited in its place). This is especially appropriate since DRV is a review of process, not of content, and clearly all of the issues central to the dispute over DRV are based on the content (and implications thereof) of the template, not on the exact circumstances of the original speedy-deletion (which were admittedly questionable).

I have also brought this issue up on User talk:Cyde in the hopes of getting some sort of explanation for this bizarre and unnecessary unilateral action. I have no interest in getting dragged into a revert war, so I will not be reverting his re-removal of the discussion anymore; if no one else cares about this abuse of process, then so be it. Toodles. -Silence 06:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The beautiful thing about T1 is that the more people claim it doesn't apply, the more it applies. Of course it was divisive and inflammatory - just look at the DRV debate and all other debates that preceded it. All the more reason to delete it and keep Wikipedia free of playground politics. Cyde's only lapse was in not moving it to the closed section, which I'll go and do now. --Sam Blanning(talk) 13:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I must agree that there was no majority to overturn. But Cyde should not have closed after voting in it; and he has broken the pledge in his RfA to go away from userboxes. Admins should avoid the appearance of impropriety. Septentrionalis 13:57, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Silence says there was a majority, doesn't he?StrangerInParadise 14:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I count 16 endorses to 10 undeletes in the edit[2] before Cyde closed it. This is a raw count, without discounting anything. Describing this as consensus, however, is questionable. Septentrionalis 16:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Template:User review was ~32 undelete versus ~27 keep deleted by my raw count and it was 'closed' as keep deleted. While I agree with "vuck userboxes" vucking process and policy is something that should be frowned upon. Kotepho 17:39, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Vuck userboxes, vuck process, go write articles. --Doc ask? 16:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Firstly, WP:DRV#Restoring the page (for admins) says that a DRV runs for at least ten days, which by prematurely closing the poll, Cyde might well have skewed. I am not ready to vuck process just yet. This is enough reason to reopen the poll for at least three more days.
Secondly, speedy policies are only to be used where the likelihood of consensus is very high. The WP:AfD page talks of rough consensus to allow a delete to procede. I think the principle which should be applied to a speedy DRV then is whether it is demonstrated that a vote on AfD could fail to get a delete consensus. I think 37%, a prematurely closed poll, and other past undeletes might arguably indicate that consensus failure was possible. This is a reason to undelete directly and relist on AfD.
StrangerInParadise 17:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The discussion on User review was highly contaminated by users which have since been blocked for sockpuppetry and disruptiveness. Giving in to them would have only legitimized their bad behavior and encouraged more of it in the future. The raw counts are misleading. If anything, that entire discussion was excellent proof of the divisiveness of the template in question. --Cyde Weys 18:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

What is divisive is speedying userboxes. Please, please, take them to TfD, if you think you have to; AFAICS, no-onr has yet exploded over somebody else's userbox in place. Septentrionalis 21:44, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
So, unlike articles, categories, images and other templates, userboxes are so precious to Wikipedia, and such a loss when deleted, that they should enjoy the special privillage of a unique exemption from speedy deletion. Why don't you propose that as a policy and see if you can get consensus? - It is such a good idea. --Doc ask? 21:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Just because you aren't aware of any circumstances doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. I've seen it a few times. Also, userpages with loads of userboxes just look unprofessional. We're trying to make a professional encyclopedia here, not a collection of MySpace pages. And speedying of userboxes is only divisive because certain elements (a lot of them WR users) cause a huge fuss over some stupid non-encyclopedic content being deleted. They're here for the wrong reasons. --Cyde Weys 21:49, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
"The discussion on User review was highly contaminated by users which have since been blocked for sockpuppetry and disruptiveness" - there were many legitamate users who gave their opinions there, and I'm dissapointed that you were the one who closed it. Just another star in the night T | @ | C 21:48, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
It's not nice to go around accusing people of being uncivil, especially when they haven't. --Cyde Weys 21:58, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
My apologies. Just another star in the night T | @ | C 23:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
It actually was the other way - people who wanted the userbox to be kept were afraid to voice their opinion because they could be blocked for disagreeing with userbox-hating "cabal" (I put cabal into quotes, because its members hardly have any influence on Wikipedia and I refuse to think they are the core of Wikipedia community). The DR discussion should NEVER be closed by an active participiant in the discussion. I hope there are still some sane admins around that would do the right thing and undelete the temnplate.  Grue  21:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
You know, implying that any admin who disagrees with your point of view is insane really isn't a good way to get admins to do what you want. --Cyde Weys 22:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
He's not implying that - he is saying that since you were involved someone should be "sane" and do "the right thing" and undelete the template, eventually giving the discussion a thurough comb-over. Just another star in the night T | @ | C 22:06, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
You put "sane" in quotes. Grue didn't. That changes the meaning completely. --Cyde Weys 23:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I think that everyone who believes that the text "This person has an account is a memeber of Wikipedia Review" is inflammatory is at least a little bit insane. Normal people don't act this way (I'm okay, JUST GIVE ME THE PEPSI PLEASE).  Grue  06:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Example: I'm a member of Wikipedia Review. I'm also a member of Esperanza and have violated policy only once (3RR in February). Not everyone who uses that site is "bad". — nathanrdotcom (T • C • W) 07:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I am merely suggesting that

  • everyone needs to consider one of the words from Jimbo, immediately above, and relax a notch or two
  • that if the template in question had been put on TfD, it would have been gone in five days, not seven; it would probably never have come here, and if it had, it would have received overwhelming Endorse no fault in process votes. I don't see why anyone would prefer the present discussion to that outcome. Septentrionalis 22:17, 12 April 2006 (UT
Template:User admins ignoring policy
Cyde, you broke policy in closing the discussion early, and you are far too biased in this to be the one unilaterally to tally up what you think is valid voter turnout and then close the discussion. That is never the right thing- period- and Wikipedia is about doing the right thing. You should either open the discussion again for several days, or undelete and move straight to RfD. StrangerInParadise 22:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh, so I'm "biased" now? Even assuming I am biased, isn't it a good thing that I'm disclosing my bias? Isn't that one of the big arguments for userboxes, that disclosing your biases is good? And then get on with writing articles? Well, okay, so hypothetically I've disclosed my userbox biases for a long time. Why shouldn't I just get on with admin matters? If you don't trust an admin who you think is biased then why in the world should I trust editors who disclose their bias through userboxes? --Cyde Weys 23:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Any result which ends in a divisive and inflammatory transcluded piece of crapft being kept off Wikipedia is the right one for the encyclopaedia, and on Wikipedia, by WP:IAR and the philosophy it embodies, every process which ends in the right result is a properly followed process. If Cyde or anyone bows to the whims of the people who want this back (which I trust him not to do anyway), I will delete it as a recreation. I stand by what I said (somewhat facetiously) in the DRV, which is that there is no possible way another vote could settle this to anyone's satisfaction. This issue is settled. --Sam Blanning(talk) 23:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
This does not mean that the decision falls to you alone, Sam, so if you override an admin who recreates this it is a wheel war. In a broader sense, to relist this over and over is a consensus war, as you break past consensus to try to assert a new consensus. In the absence of any new developments with this userbox, to have relisted it is to have consensus warred. -StrangerInParadise 23:44, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
1) A wheel war is when an admin reverses another admin's actions more than once, which I don't plan on doing. 2) Template:User review is not currently protected, so recreating it is not an admin action and therefore performing a proper G4 speedy if necessary would not be wheel warring (completely wrong there, obviously, got confused with another recreated template I just speedied). But it looks like we agree that this shouldn't be relisted, at least. --Sam Blanning(talk) 23:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok Cyde, I'll assume that ten (roughly 1/3rd) of the keep votes are sockpuppets of banned users and that gives you 20 undelete and 30 keep deleted. 60% isn't much of a consensus, especially for something that was speedied in the first place. It should have been listed on TFD again. Frankly, I don't care about the template; I do care about people ignoring consensus, policy, and process. I find the reasoning that the debate was divisive as proof of the divisiveness of the template to be spurious at best. It would have gone a lot better without people calling each other neo-nazis and userboxes themselves are already a divisive issue. Kotepho 22:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

40% isn't nearly a large enough "consensus" to override Wikipedia T1 policy. I don't think consensus can ever override policy .. yeah, you can change policy, but until you have, I don't think you can selectively override policy in a few instances, and certainly not without even a majority. --Cyde Weys 23:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
With comments like, Also, userpages with loads of userboxes just look unprofessional. We're trying to make a professional encyclopedia here, not a collection of MySpace pages., saying you are biased is not to go out on a limb. Nor do I care that you are biased, or that you come here being biased. And, yes, I like that you make you biases clear— one of the reasons I like userboxes, BTW. I do care that you break policy. I do not like that you presume to assign motives to your opponents, rather than AGF. And, of course, your calling your opponents trolls doesn't really help either. Not only does it harm the encyclopedia and the community, it looks very unprofessional. -StrangerInParadise 23:26, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, T1 is a speedy delete criterion, which by definition is that the matter is so clear that non-consensus is highly unlikely. Most of the reversals on T1 cases show just how far the principle of presumed consensus has been left behind ("{{User feminist}}"?!). -StrangerInParadise 23:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Was this userbox really so important to people that there has to be mud-flinging going on here? Come on, it's just a userbox about Wikipedia review accounts, is losing this particular one so detrimental a big fight has to be made about it? Homestarmy 23:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

As an intellectual exercise, I was going to do a count of the 'undelete' voters' reasoning. But it wasn't half as interesting as I had expected, because it turns out that virtually all of them went for 'because there weren't enough votes for deletion'. Amazingly, not a single one even attempted to come up with a reasoning why this userbox helped build the encyclopaedia. Even "User F*cks Bu$h" or whatever it was managed to find one editor who argued that it benefited the encyclopaedia. But all this one got was "admins should respect consensus". TfD is not for playing political games, which is all another round of TfD would have been. If you want a useless, boring, pointless argument, go to Fark.com, encyclopaedia editors should have neither need nor desire for them. Cyde was justified in giving such votes very little weight, and the fact that he had a conflict of interest is irrelevant, as any responsible admin would have done the same. --Sam Blanning(talk) 23:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The point of having it at TFD is because it is visited more regularily thus more real discussion is possible. Just another star in the night T | @ | C 23:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Sam, you may be unclear on how this process differs when the item in question is speedied. It suffices to say, this ought not to have been speedied. In fact, it is good form not to weigh in on its merits until it is moved to RfD. My reason was that this userbox is harmless, and ought not to be deleted. I don't have even to like it very much to do that. Your standard of whether it helps the encyclopedia is not relevent so much as the standard should one presume to contradict those who believe it does. I don't see that standard met here. I don't see any of the harms alleged even approaching the harm to the encyclopedia done by those who fail to grasp that WP:Ignore all rules is not an actual invitation to wreck policy, but only one to consider new good-faith avenues of action. It is not WP:Ignore all others -StrangerInParadise 23:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
This template is clearly divisive and inflammatory. None of the people attempting to keep it have disputed that. I would not be so keen to "contradict those who believe it does help the encyclopaedia" if a single one of them attempted to explain how it did so. --Sam Blanning(talk) 00:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I personally don't agree with the charge that on the face of it it is divisive and inflammatory - the text itself is quite neutral - it simply states that the user has a wikipedia review account (whatever that entails). It helps the encyclopedia because criticism of the encyclopedia it always good because it helps improve it. Now, the site may contain trolling and the like but any site you go to, especially those with criticism, are bound to contain such a thing. Also, it probably isn't the greatest criticism - and personally I think there are many blogs which are better then the posts there but on the face of it the only real inflammatory nature is the extreme dislike admins share towards it because of its nature and the fact that "trolls" in general often cite it. Just another star in the night T | @ | C 00:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, that makes it sound like a lofty great site which wasn't exactly my intention, but anyway someone asked for an explanation and I gave one :). Just another star in the night T | @ | C 01:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
You are ignoring those that voted to keep this. As one of them, let me say this again, slowly and clearly: it is harmless. It is neither divisive nor inflammatory to the standard required by T1. It is neither divisive nor inflammatory period. Stop pretending that those who voted against you are misguided or somehow secretely in agreement with you or somehow just don't matter. Do as we have asked and undelete, please. StrangerInParadise 03:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Just by looking at this discussion here, I'd say it's pretty divisive. Good faith editors are finding it inflammatory. And anyway, if it's kept then you're ignoring those who "voted" to delete it. Thing is, you can't vote away the fact that it's disruptive, and it's very clearly that. We should probably get on with why we're all here. Rx StrangeLove 05:22, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
By that logic, a template is divisive not because there is anything about its actual contents that is necessarily inflammatory, but because there is an argument about it. If that is the case, then any template can be deleted, as long as there's a dispute that involves it in any way whatsoever, no matter how unjustified the arguments against it are. For example, if there was a lengthy argument about whether "This user is a Jew." is divisive, and there was no argument about whether "This user is a Christian." is, the Jew template would have to be speedy-deleted entirely by virtue of the discussion about it. This sort of fallacious reasoning is becoming increasingly common in this discussion, and should be curtailed; if you think it should be deleted, then justify it by stating what about the template itself and about its contents or implications is clearly divisive and inflammatory, to the extent that any discussion about it is unwarranted and we can skip TfD and go straight to speedy-delete. Do not say "I think it should be speedy-deleted because there's a disagreement over whether it should be speedy-deleted"; that sort of cyclic logic is dangerously easy to abuse, and, in this case, is actually genuinely inaccurate, since the vast majority of the debate and ill-will surrounding this debate is based on valid disagreements over policy interpretation, over process abuse by an over-eager user involved in the dispute who overstepped his bounds to get the result he wanted, and over the issue of whether Wikipedia should act as an arbiter of which websites are or aren't permissable to link to on one's userpage with a transcluded little box (since no one's yet objected to the "This user has a deviantART account" template, which is surely much less useful to Wikipedia's purposes than a link to a website that genuinely relates to Wikipedia! :)), not over the horrifically inflammatory nature of text like "This user has an account on X website". Self-fulfilling rationales are dangerous ones indeed, especially when they so clearly disregard the actual details, nuances, and history of this discussion. -Silence 05:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, I would still love to hear your (or anyone else's) response to User_talk:Rx_StrangeLove#Reverting_Deletion_review.2FUserbox_debates. The reason I created this thread was not to discuss the template itself (though that's a fair, albeit clearly distinct, related topic), but to discuss Cyde's deletion of it after he had made a dozen distinct comments, many of them quite impassioned and demonstrating a deep involvement, to the DRVs regarding Template:User review, yet then saw fit to personally close the debate early with the (unexplained) interpretation that it was an "obvious keep deleted". Even if you feel that this template should be deleted, and even if you feel that it should be speedy-deleted (which is an entirely different matter, and much less justifiable by current Wikipedia policy), this is clearly an unacceptable policy violation, an abuse of process, and a complete failure to sustain a basic and fundamental amount of responsibility and fairness in discussion-moderating and DRV-closure. A neutral, uninvolved party, not one of the most aggressive and impassioned opponents of the template, should have analyzed and closed the discussion (and probably should have given the discussion more time first, since it was still quite actively progressing). If this error in judgment is not met by a clear reprimand so as to prevent its recurrence in the future, and if the ongoing DRV discussion is not re-opened, or at least closed properly, it will be a sad day for Wikipedia—sad not because of the fate of some insignificant, silly, harmless little colored box, but because of the many valuable editors who will be alienated, disillusioned and insulted by such blatant corruption. -Silence 06:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
So by the size of this discussion, you conclude that the Userbox is divisive? You always disagree/No I don't!, that may work in Vaudeville, but not here. The only thing that is divisive here is the WP:IAO of those admins who are not following policy. A majority of good faith editors are finding it not inflammatory, will you at least acknowledge this? Or are you now going to choose people of whom to ABF until you whittle yourselves a majority. This in addition to closing the discussion early? This does work in Florida, I grant you, but it shouldn't work here.
Why do these admins assume that when they waste hours on non-article space edits trying to delete userboxes, it's cause they care so much about the project, but when others say that these deletion attempts are in fact hurting the project, three more show up and say, "Why are you wasting time here? Go back and edit!". When they question others' commitment to the project in the face of disagreement, that is uncivil.
This may come as some surprise, but I don't need to be reminded of why I am here. At the moment, I am here asking admins to stop hurting the project by ignoring policy (you know how annoyed I get when admins ignore policy). In fact, by voting here, we are trying in part to undo this lapse in policy, a reasonable goal all by itself- call it P1- a response to a wrongful T1 speedy. And some of us do think this should be restored outright. How can you bemoan the existence of WR when every bypass of policy shows its potential for rampant popularity.
Some take a break from editing articles to come here and ask people to ignore policy. Others take a break from editing articles to come here and ask people to follow policy. How could the former so consistently believe they have the moral high ground here?
StrangerInParadise 06:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it's time to ask you to give it a rest. You've repeatedly claimed that administrators are ignoring policy by deleting userboxes under T1, and it's only days since the Arbitration Committee said that you had been engaging in "personal attacks and unwarranted assumptions of bad faith", and put you on Personal Attack Parole as a remedy for that, saying "This remedy is to be interpreted broadly to include unwarranted assumptions of bad faith." You have also been restricted regarding userboxes. If in the view of any three administrators (and I'm sure there are at this moment at least three such administrators) you are "disruptive with regard to userboxes, or related talk, category, template, or project pages", then you may be banned from all userbox-related pages for up to one year.

You continue to edit under cover of an acknowledged sock puppet without, as far as I'm aware, disclosing your other identities. You refuse to acknowledge that those with whom you disagree are honestly interpreting policy as well as they can and are engaged, as are you, in an attempt to improve Wikipedia. These actions poison the atmosphere of debate. Please stop, or else the personal attack parole may eithers acquire some teeth or, failing that, you may find yourself unable to pursue what has clearly become the consuming role of your life as a sock puppet. --Tony Sidaway 00:45, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Er, isn't that kind of an ad hominum response to the points made? Herostratus 02:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

No, it was a final warning to an admitted sock puppet whose edits have been found by the arbitration committee to be disruptive, uncivil and full of personal attacks, and who had been placed on an extremely tight leash which he was apparently determined to ignore. As it happens, another administrator has blocked him over some of his recent comments, not all of which I had seen when I made the above warning. The editor in question may still use his other account, but he is bound by the same restrictions placed there by the Committee, members of which are aware of his identity and are watching. --Tony Sidaway 10:49, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted material

Actually, when I restored the material two sections up, I did it directly from history; not having noticed it. Nevertheless, since that is the policy under which this page is being conducted, it should be on the page, rather than here. 23:23, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I see that no one has bothered to comment on the proposal to restore what Jimbo actually said to the project page. Does silence imply consent? Septentrionalis 17:52, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
No. It was not policy, but discussion, it is best on the talk page. If we had something on the main page, it would have to be agreed policy, and I doubt we could get agreement. In fact, the policy that governs this page is already on the main page of WP:DRV, this page is mearly a convenient overflow. --Doc ask? 18:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

That stuff is old hat now. There's no point in continuing to clutter the DRVU page with it. --Cyde Weys 02:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I shall remember this, the next time Cyde quotes Jimbo. Septentrionalis 00:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Feminist userbox vote not archived?

Why wasn't the voting for User feminist archived?--The ikiroid (talk parler hablar paroli 说 話し parlar) 14:17, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Probably not worth it. --Doc ask? 14:19, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
It was archived and it was worth it. Classic misuse of T1. StrangerInParadise 16:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
So why didn't anyone put it under "Archived Discussions"?--The ikiroid (talk parler hablar paroli 说 話し parlar) 21:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
According to SIP, any use of T1 is a misuse. --Doc ask? 21:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, I added it back in. Let it go, Doc.--The ikiroid (talk parler hablar paroli 说 話し parlar) 22:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wait... this is semiprotected?

Why is this page semiprotected? I assume it's to stop vandalism, but if we're having actual discussions here, why on earth are we making it impossible for anons and new users to add their opinions? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 22:55, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that anyone with a user account opened in the past 5 days is likely to have any novel input or insight into the point of community-splitting items of worthlessness.
James F. (talk) 23:01, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
I seriously doubt that anyone with a user account opening in the past 5 days is going to be able to improve WP:V, but that's still unprotected. I'll add a modified {{sprotect}} template to it which explains the situation, if it causes great offence then the page probably shouldn't be semi-protected. --Sam Blanning(talk) 23:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting

Look what I found on Wikipedia:Words of wisdom. "While editors' points of view are certainly welcomed, please remember that Wikipedia has a neutral point of view policy with regards to writing articles. To that effect, editors should work with other editors despite their conflicting egos and points of view. Through collaboration and presentation of either a neutral point of view or all points of view article, Wikipedia helps to illustrate good information."

Translate that as you will. --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 10:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

OK. But it says to me 1) we are a neutral encyclopedia - and whilst individual POV is inevitable, we should never focus on it or celebrate it 2) we are in the bussiness of collaberative article writing, not dividing into partisan groups with little badges promoting egos and points of view. 3) We should remove anything that gets in the way of working together towards a neutral point-of view - particularly anything that is divisive or inflammetory. 4) we should view each other as fellow-editors and not as representatives or advocates of any political or ideological beliefs. --Doc ask? 12:44, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
While we're playing the interpretation game, i'll give it a shot myself :). 1. the NPOV should be reflected in wikipedia articles rather than people's POVs (unless of course the article is on a person's POV) 2. editors should learn to be able to work with each other, despite clearly conflicting egos and POVs. 3. collaboration + presentation = information. And please don't remove my brain, it gets in the way of NPOV because I don't agree with everyone :(. Homestarmy 12:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Well said. --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 13:33, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I can agree with that too. --Doc ask? 14:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why delete?

Why are all those useboxes deleted? Do they break any laws or rules? For example, why delete:

This user believes a marriage consists only of one man and one woman.

After all, even if this got deleted, we can still use code to use this userbox further... So there is no point in deleting userboxes because they 'insult' you... Korodzik 10:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


  • A good place to start learning why is WP:NOT. Wikipedia is not a soapbox and is not a place for political debates. Aside from this philosophical argument against Userboxes, the practical problem here is that by making this a template, someone made this a community issue. So if people simply cut-and-paste the code onto user pages, as you did on this page, that practical problem simply disappears. Then perhaps a vast majority of people who are up in arms against them simply ignore them, since they would no longer be used (through Categories) to rally "tribes" against one another - something for which WP was not designed. Nhprman 14:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Some people just get real exiteable about all this I guess. Homestarmy 13:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What a surprise

Big shock that the anti-American userboxes were deleted. Not everyone worships the stars and stripes, you know; not everyone thinks that America forcing it's culture onto every other country is a good thing. The world is not America. --Stevefarrell 00:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

  • No one is forcing you to worship any flag or any nation, but your views about America are irrelevant to Wikipedia. But don't be offended by that statment, because my views about America are irrelevant here, too. Political User boxes of any kind have no place here, but those attacking other nations or beliefs are especially irrelevant, divisive and infammatory, and are thus damaging to the project, which is not the place for unregulated free speech. Nhprman 00:58, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Would you find an Anti-France userbox acceptable? An Anti-Scotland one? An Anti-Israel one? -Silence 00:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • On a personal level I might be offended by, say, an anti-British userbox, but that's not the point. The point is this : what's wrong with being against Americanization? It's not the same thing as being against America. There's too much emphasis on and bias towards American culture and American ways in countries that aren't America, and it's spiralling into a real problem. That is my point of view, and I think I should be allowed to express that on my userpage. I wouldn't express it in an edit to an article about something to do with America.
  • I also think that most of the userboxes being deleted are negative points of view, so, you're allowed to like something but not to dislike something. Why is that? Free speech is dead by the way, didn't you know? The reaction to the Mohammed cartoons is proof enough of that. --Stevefarrell 01:02, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Again - how you personally feel about this or other issues are ALL irrellevent to the reason why this site exists: to edit an UNBIASED encyclopedia. I do have to say that if the position of a userbox template is to attack a viewpoint or person or nation, it is being deleted about twice as fast, and that is the correct action to take. The Wikipedia community is not meant to be a political battleground or a social networking site. Nhprman 01:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm an American and I love the lable 'un-american'. People call me that because I disagree with my President. I use the userbox as a badge of honor. Can we please have a moratorium on userbox deletion. Thanks! --Dragon695 01:04, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Can we please have a moratorium on divisive political userboxes being CREATED, please? And does it occur to you that many non-American users of WP do not care whether you're an American who hates America? Your views are irrelevant to editing an encyclopedia (and if you have bias in your edits, they will be obvious without a little box on your user page.) Nhprman 01:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The point here is to create an UNBIASED encyclopdia. But is adding biased views and userboxes in your userpages acceptable? I believe that Jimbo Wales takes a negative view in this as well. However, by adding these biased views on your userpages (only!) makes this project more colourful to edit and participate. It adds a certain sense of "human" feel to it. After all, ALL human beings have their own POV. Any comments? --Siva1979Talk to me 03:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo had a comment:
"Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian."
I think when people start talking about free speech and expressions of personal POV they need to reflect on this statement. Rx StrangeLove 04:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Fine, so if instead of using a userbox to say what I liked and didn't like and what my political/religious leanings were, I said it in the body text of my user page, would someone delete it? I mean it's all very well going around deleting userboxes, but if you're able to say 'I am a Buddhist who dislikes France' on your userpage (I'm not and I don't by the way), why can't there be shortcut userboxes to express that same idea? User pages are NOTHING to do with encyclopedic articles. Stevefarrell 09:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, there's a difference between putting text on your userpage and making a template that makes it easy to gather up a posse of people with similar POVs. Oh, and your claim that userpages are nothing to do with encylcopedic articles is false - a lot of people make their userpages quite encyclopedic, in the sense of containing content that's related to writing the encyclopedia. So, nobody would be likely to delete "I'm a Buddhist who dislikes France" from your userpage, but we'd be a lot more impressed if you checked your POV at the door and used your userpage to say "I'm a Wikipedian, and here's my thoughts on how we can write the best encyclopedia ever..." -GTBacchus(talk) 17:07, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with GTBacchus and Rx_StrangeLove here, but stevefarrell does has a point. If you simply use TEXT instead of these boxes on your Userpage, then I believe that's a far lesser sin than 1) creating a template (which makes it a community issue) and 2) that template becoming a "cateogry" of "Users who are Buddhists and who hate France." That makes WP into a social networking site, something Jimbo and many others are fighting against. As for the content of User pages, I agree with GTBacchus about keeping personal views off it, and WP:NOT makes it clear that this isn't OUR personal homepage, but until a specific policy is worked out, as long as you aren't saying you're a rapist, pedophile or support mass murder on your page, I think you're pretty safe from deletion worries. (See my User page, where I generally stay away from politics, but DO suggest an alternative to templated boxes. Nhprman 17:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Well then, is it a good idea to add a sub-section on the User page titled POV comments on ALL user pages in Wikipedia? If we completely discourage POV comments or userboxes on user pages, it would create an unrealistic feeling of unhuman contribution. Of course, extreme POV userboxes are not to be kept in userpages but what about the milder ones? --Siva1979Talk to me 15:55, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Get a life

Er... was that really necessary? RadioKirk talk to me 20:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. Exactly. Get a life. Misza13 T C 20:10, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
On all sides, please... RadioKirk talk to me 20:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
If Grue can assume bad faith and act like a jackass why can't we? Mackensen (talk) 21:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Because two wrongs make an escalation? Looking at this from the standpoint of a potential future admin, aren't we supposed to provide a better example than "he's doing it and he's an admin, so I can do it too, neener neener neener"? RadioKirk talk to me 22:11, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd always thought so, which is why I hate to see admins sniping at each other (note the linked article). These debates seem to bring out the worst in people. It's odd, really, because a bumper sticker is a silly thing to fight over when you get the car for free. Mackensen (talk) 22:13, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Hehe! RadioKirk talk to me 22:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Interesting comparison Mackensen. Allow me to expand on your metaphor, and say this. Do we allow other people to tell us what bumper stickers we can or cannot have on our car? --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 22:19, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Here we do. On the other hand, you're permitted to paint whatever you like on your car, short of outright personal attacks. Templates are bad. Raw HTML is good. Mackensen (talk) 22:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
What about "calling up" a "template" saved within a user's space? RadioKirk talk to me 22:48, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Whether it's in Template space or User space the effect is the same. It's a bumper sticker and not a paint job. Mackensen (talk) 22:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, writing the code into the page (as opposed to calling it up from a saved "template") would produce the identical result. Wasn't this supposed to be the purpose of subst'ing to user-space that which currently exists in template-space? RadioKirk talk to me 22:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Raw HTML is bad. See the debate way back on wether to allow the span tag.Geni 02:06, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
You realize of course that the argument will come back, "It's not our car, we're merely taking turns driving"? ;) RadioKirk talk to me 22:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
"Get a life?" You're an admin, you have to set an example. Being incivil isn't doing that. — nathanrdotcom (T • C • W) 05:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, we tried to set an example by writing articles but that clearly had no effect... Mackensen (talk) 02:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I think if you read through the User Contributions of editors who defend userboxes, you'll note there are plenty of mainspace contributions. There is simply no defense for the comment Ms. Martin made. --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 23:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
You might be the exception to the rule. --Cyde Weys 23:31, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
The edit counter is down and no longer updated. If you want an accurate count, download Interiot's tool instead. I'm not sure what your point is, but D-Day has 4412 edits, 2611 of which are in the mainspace. IronChris | (talk) 23:41, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Protected Talk page: DRV/U

This page has been protected by Cyde to prevent users from commenting crtically on his speedy deletions. Please make a note of it. --PunkChicken 05:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Note that PunkChicken is a confirmed sockpuppet of Dschor (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log). --Cyde Weys 23:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

It's only sprotected. Real users (that is, non-sockpuppet accounts) are perfectly able to comment on this page just fine. Sprotection is working perfectly in this instance. --Cyde Weys 05:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

What exactly was the reasoning behind sprotecting the page? I'm too lazy to peer through the history myself, but I'd assume it was something to the effect of sockpuppet vandalism. It still may be considered inappropriate to leave the page sprotected so long without stating a need for it to be (and without leaving a notice about it), as talk pages usually shouldn't be protected, even ones to which new users may not be able to contribute effectively. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
juding by the timeing it would be due to an anon voteing "*Undelete Please remember: Speedy Deletion is not a Toy." on the various open polls.Geni 19:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

AmiDaniel, this talk page has never been protected. It was the project page that was protected. And frankly, it needs to stay that way, because there really aren't any legit reasons anon IPs/new users need to comment there, so it saves us a good deal of work keeping out all of the sockpuppets. These latest disruptions were caused by sockpuppets of Dschor (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log), by the way, who is already subject to an ArbCom ruling regarding userbox disruption. --Cyde Weys 23:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Oops, my bad .. I don't know how I mixed that up; I thought I queried the log for the talk page, but I actually searched for the project page. Okay, this I certainly won't object to (at least currently). Sorry. AmiDaniel (Talk) 23:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Closing of User:Unamerican

This was closed very prematurely. None of the keep deleted votes addressed the fact that the template violates no policy, and certainly satisfies no CSD criteria. Such a template is not divisive or inflammatory - however, the speedy deletion and speedy close of DRV are certainly divisive and inflammatory. --71.36.251.182 22:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I guess alot of them thought it was sort of mean against America, that's sort of inflammatory.... Homestarmy 22:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I may have erred in closing the Unamerican thing early, but it did seem pretty cut-and-dried. If you think it should be re-opened I don't see a problem with doing so.
More important, I think at least, I accidentally deleted the voting on the sock puppet userboxes in the same edit. For which my apologies. --Tony Sidaway 22:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I see no reason to reopen the discussion. Unlike an article, no new evidence ever comes to light during a userbox discussion, it either violates policy or it doesn't. Maybe if blatantly obvious T1 cases are closed early more often, people will waste less of DRV's time with them. --Sam Blanning(talk) 11:35, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Considering the new evidence in the sockpuppet userboxes' case, I'd say that ("no new evidence ever comes to light during a userbox discussion") is not true. --AySz88^-^ 00:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Blatantly obvious T1 this was not. CSD exist for a reason - speedy deletion without criteria is chaos. For this project to survive, there must be some reasonable means of determining what can be deleted. DRV is meant to help provide that reasonable means, but when the discussion is closed prematurely, the damage to the project goes well beyond the deleted content. There is no CSD that applies to the Template:User Unamerican. --Dschor 01:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vote counting

Regarding Template:User:Transhumainst, the result is listed as 'kept deleted'. Yet the votes were 16 delete, 18 restore (counting my nomination as vote for restore, discarding one double vote for delete by the same user, and counting votes only for the User:Transhumainst template - several users voted 'delete User:Anti-transhumanist, restore User:Transhumanist, and there is probably a slight majority to keep 'Anti' version deleted. I'd therefore like to ask if there are any objections if I were undelete the User:Transhumanist template? The majority of voters voted to undelete it, after all.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

  • It's not a vote, it's a discussion. Not everyone gets an equal say (especially the sockpuppets and terminal userbox trolls). It's really up to the closing admin's discretion. And may I remind you that it takes more than a plurality of support to override an established Wikipedia policy (in this case, CSD T1). --Cyde Weys 21:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I closed this. It was quite close. Most of the objections seemed to be attempts to challenge well established deletion policy, and most of the administrators voting strongly supported the deletion. Odds are if they're undeleted they'll only end up being speedied again, so I used my discretion and closed with "keep deleted." I don't see any point in undeletion. --Tony Sidaway 21:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree that a plurality cannot override established Wikipedia policy, so it is even more true that a minority cannot override established Wikipedia policy, which states that in the case of templates, speedy-deletion is only for clearly "divisive and inflammatory" templates, of which "This user is a transhumanist" does not qualify. The vote and discussion alike were clear on the point that this is not a clear-cut enough case to warrant overriding TfD process; the main reason it wasn't even more clear is because the vote improperly merged the discussion of both the pro- nad anti-boxes rather than correctly nominating them as separate and distinct issues. -Silence 21:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
So administrator's opinions count for more? I particularly agree with this closure, as they were userfied so why bother, but in generally I'm not sure I see the point of having DRVU at all. If things are sent to TFD and kept someone deletes it again a month later and the cycle repeats (I could give a handful of examples, but I'm sure I don't need to). Someone should pull an Ed Poor and just delete DRVU. Any actual process problems from a TFD can be done on DRV and discussing T1s seems to be an exercise in futility. Kotepho 21:27, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
The problem with that is, about half of the T1 Speedy Deletions don't even fall under T1. The deleters just seem to use it as an excuse delete the userbox. --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 21:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'd definitely agree that the fact that administrators overwhelmingly support the deletions, and those who regularly oppose them tend not to be highly valued editors (though as with most generalities there are exceptions to both) weighs very strongly in closing deletion reviews of userboxes. And in view of the trivialness of many of the reviews that are brought to WP:DRVU, I am also leaning towards the view that we probably don't need a separate review page for userboxes. I have a feeling that having this page only encourages the incorrect impression that deletion of inflammatory and divisive userboxes is in some way illegitimate. --Tony Sidaway 01:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with that. WP:DRVU should be shut down ... there's no longer any reason to run it separately from the main WP:DRV. --Cyde Weys 01:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I doubt the impression that "deletion of inflammatory and divisive userboxes is in some way illegitimate" is due to the existence of this page, but probably primarily because various people keep saying it. --AySz88^-^ 01:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
In this specific case the transhumanism template was not "divisive and inflammatory" - not in my opinion, and not in the opinion of various other good faith users. It was not even divisive, let alone inflammatory, and T1 requires both. Although I voted to keep the anti-transhumanism one, I can see how it could have been considered divisive and inflammatory, since it was attacking a philosophical position held by some people, and thus expressing intolerance. Whatever else happens, the anti-transhumanism template should not be restored, and I will vote against similar templates in the future. I don't think there's anything further to discuss there, and no one is suggesting that there is.
I think that Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus should be commended for doing the right thing in opening this discussion, i.e. consulting with the community about what should be done rather than taking some unilateral action without consultation. That's a lot better than having a war about it.
In my opinion, the right outcome in the short term would be one that would see the transhumanism userbox restored. In the sincere opinion of many good users, the template does not fall under T1, and that was seen in the debate where restoring the userbox had strong support, perhaps even majority support. Moreover, at the moment, this outcome is anomalous compared to "User feminist" and other cases where userboxes that could not have been any less "divisive and inflammatory" were restored following debate.
However, nothing should happen until there has been a full discussion here with all points of view being tested.
In the longer term, T1 needs to be modified. Template space is not for userboxes that identify people's political, religious and philosophical positions. Moreover, although a userbox such as the one under debate is not inherently divisive or inflammatory we know from experience that such userboxes can be used as an instrument for vote stacking, which is a divisive activity. I think that we need to be working for a consensus in which all that is acknowledged, and then we can write policy accordingly. Metamagician3000 01:55, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
(By the way, which "[userbox] under debate" are you talking about?) --AySz88^-^ 02:17, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
The userbox under debate here, as I understand it, says: "This user is a transhumanist." Is that what you were asking? Metamagician3000 02:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, thanks, I got it confused with the ones currently on the page. :) --AySz88^-^ 03:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I actually expressed my support for keeping the Anti-Transhumanist userbox deleted (at least I think I did), but it does seem that if upwards of 50% of the users (even if some are socks, which I think few were) supported undeleting the userbox, the template should be restored and sent to TfD (if one were so inclined), where it may or may not be deleted. Closing discussions, especially in an incredibly heated DRVU debate, should have nothing to do with an admin's belief in the issue, but rather it should be about observing if there was a distinguished enough objection to the speedy deletion that it should be undeleted. I could however support getting rid of DRVU, as there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between debates over userboxes and debates over other templates, except that everyone on both sides takes them so goddamn personally (myself included with the puppet one). Frankly, userboxes are so utterly insignificant, and I just can't understand why the one side is so determined to rid Wikipedia of them all and why the other side wants to preserve and create every single outlandish and inappropriate userbox they can imagine--it seems so absurd, and such a waste of time that could be better spent editing or leading a normal life. This was really my first ever userbox undeletion debate, and I'm utterly appaled by the horrible attributes it brought out in everyone. I simply can't understand why these discussions aren't handled like every other deletion discussion--people get together, they discuss it, they reach a conclusion, done. Maybe I'm just an idealist. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe that "people get together, they discuss it, they reach a conclusion, done" is a pretty good description of what we have seen happening. Userboxes are deleted all the time under T1, only a small fraction are ever queried and--not surprisingly--even those tend to be kept deleted by an overwhelming margin. Maybe it is time to get rid of this page; it still seems to breed a festering sense of grievance that utterly useless bits of nonsense actually get deleted, and a completely unrealistic expectation that they might get undeleted if enough people clamor about it. --Tony Sidaway 13:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I think Tony is mistaken. A more correct statement would be "Userboxes are deleted all the time under T1 (whether or not they are 'divisive' or 'inflammatory'), and (most) adminis are not willing to restore them even if there is a clear consensus that they do not fall under T1 and that they should be restored, so there's no point to DRV/U." (In regard WP:AGF, I am assuming good faith, but that admins WP:IAR for the good of the encyclopedia. There's room for reasonable disagreement as to what's good for the encyclopedia.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:33, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that adequately describes this process. A very small number of them do get undeleted and half of the ones that do are redeleted under T1 at some later time. Thus, it isn't "done" after the debate unless the result is keep deleted.
As long as this continues, I fail to see the point of this process at all. It is just a rubber stamp with little meaning. I am also quite confused by the vehement nature of people's opinions on userboxes, like AmiDaniel. Frankly, I don't care about userboxes. Delete them all, move them all, subst them all, do whatever you want. It is asinine to continue this farcical process though. Kotepho 13:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
As long as some people keep "pushing the boundaries" of Wikipedia and trying to use Userboxes to turn it into a sad imitation of MySpace or a political debating society, Userboxes remain an important issue threatening Wikipedia's mission. Ignoring this problem (as the site's founder is doing, apparently) is not the solution. You're right, though, on process when you say only a very few get undeleted, so it seems pointless to go through that extra step. Nhprman 14:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
But who looks at people's userpages to see what userboxes they have when they only want to get some information from an article? :/ Homestarmy 14:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I do agree that there seem to be inequality strongly favouring the deletionist camp, who in most cases can use the T1 to rubber stamp everything, while the undeletionist apparently can't win even with a majority in their favour. What is sad, however, is that pretty obviously both parties think they are acting in good faith - and often they do, as some of the deleted userboxes were obviously offending... while others obviously weren't (of course, that's all obvious from my POV). The biggest problem to me is that this entire debate about userboxes, which have now eaten hundreds if not more hours of productive editors who debate the issue here and or related pages is mostly unnecessary. There is no proof that the userboxes are affecting our primary goal: the creation of encyclopedia (certainly the little amount of time and space that has been taken by people creating and organizing userboxes has been greatly overshadowed by the deletionist attack and it's consequences). I also have not seen how the userboxes are negatively affecting the 'invisible' part of Wikipedia - i.e. our community. Or, to be clear, the first time I have seen community being affected negatively by them was when the 'userbox wars' started. Again the cure to perceived danger has become, in my POV, a much stronger disease. And unfortunately Jimbo's critique of userboxes has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: it directed the attention of the community to them where they were nothing but a small fad, and now...the Cassandra's box has been opened. I most certainly hope Jimbo will issue another comment saying 'leave the userboxes alone and go back to work', and we can go back to the old workable ways of deleting the obviously offending/unused userboxes/templates with respected and noncontroversial TfD, and stop wasting time on debates like this one. I'd really prefer to write a stub or add a para to an existing article then write here. Alas... the userbox wars are still going on, draining more and more of our time. And deleting this page certainly will not stop them: it's only a symptom of the disease, not the cause.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Jimbo is "ignoring" the situation at all. His stamp can be seen in recent userbox-related arbitration cases, which have had the effect of placing enough power into the hands of administrators to deal with such problems as userboxes may represent.

Piotrus reveals his ignorance of the userbox problem by describing the circumstances of Jimbo's statement as "where they were nothing but a small fad" Jimbo did not make any comment on the matter until userboxes had featured in several damaging cases of attempted vote packing.

The disease is being cured, slowly and surely. This page, by perpetuating the false impression that deletion of damaging non-encyclopedia content should be regarded as unusual and exceptional and should be routinely reviewed, does not help that; thankfully it has not proven a significant barrier to sensible action to remove such content, either. --Tony Sidaway 18:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Talk has wisely noted: there seem to be inequality strongly favouring the deletionist camp, who in most cases can use the T1 to rubber stamp everything, while the undeletionist apparently can't win even with a majority in their favour, and the recent case of Template:User No Marxism clearly illustrates the case, a template being deleted by certain deletionist guys, an act rejected numerous times by the community. So, the shortcoming of deletionism is that it reflects purely POV of an admin, what template to be regarded as T1 etc. Well, all the political templates may be dragged unto this category, but so far most of the political party boxes remain and seem to breed enormously; the 'deletionism of inflammatory boxes' has not prevented communists from creating and advertising their tens of different userboxes, which appearantly will remain till the end of wikipedia days. On the other, admins have been extremely specific on removing the sole userbox representing opposing view to communism and all its subsects. Rather weird bias by admins...
(Interestingly, when anti-marxist box was deleted first time a few months ago, the main claim against my proposed undeletion was 'this one falls under T1 and, well, communist boxes fall under T1 as well and will be deleted as well' --hehe-- now one may look how many of them have been deleted...)
All in all, I think that admins will not dare to delete all the political userboxes 'speedily', they will hardly even delete the most obvious 'divisive' ones en masse (e.g the amount of communist boxes, or environmentalist or whatever), but continue deleting only a few exceptions they somehow have chosen out (I can't say if due to their own bias, for the admins tend to be reluctant to reveal their personal POV by using userboxes!).--Constanz - Talk 10:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I think biases are clear, given that non-Communist Userboxes are speedy deleted, while those on the Left are "protected" by "supporters" who rally to their defense. I agree that admins don't dare delete all political userboxes, but speaking for myself, I find that a very sad commentary on Wikipedia. Either this is the place for political posturing and debate, or it's not. Either it's a social networking site, or it's not. If it's part of each, what's appropriate expression, and what's not? Supposedly WP:NOT answers these qusetions, but from the consistent comments here and on deletion reviews for individual Userboxes, people either haven't read it or choose to ignore it because it doesn't suit their ideas and agendas. Jimbo has decided to let the "community" decide this issue. This approach will fail, in part because many snide, petulant little users will continue to create and recreate divisive and political userboxes just to test the system unless some real policies are put in place. Until Jimbo speaks up on this, without hiding behind the standard qualifications and weasel words, this pathetic game will continue. As evidence that the madness continues, I note that Template:User America fan and Template:User anti-am have just been created. Neither are appropriate here. Nhprman 14:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I must challenge the above statement that administrators either dare not delete left wing userboxes or are opposed by editors who rally to save those particular userboxes. I deleted User:UBX/Communist at exactly the same time I deleted Template:User No Marxism. Both of them were valid deletions under CSD T1. Now one of them has been undeleted without discussion. That undeleted template was not the communist one. --Tony Sidaway 15:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

You deleted User:UBX/Communist at exactly the same time I deleted Template:User No Marxism but failed to note Template:user Socialist Template:user Socialist2 User:Bill_Du/Socialist4 User:Bill_Du/Socialist3 User:UBX/Democratic Socialist Template:user libertarian socialist Template:user libertarian socialist2 Template:user Christian communist Template:user marxist Template:user Trot while deleting the only anti-communist one.--Constanz - Talk 07:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
You are honestly my hero for your stand on Userboxes, Tony, but there are cases where rallying has taken place. A minor example is when a Tfd tag was placed on The User:Communist template at one point a month or so back, and within a hour or so a "supporter" removed it, saying it had "already survived review." The history is no longer there (accessible to an admin, perhaps) but it happened. We'll see how long it stays deleted this time. The rallying seems one-sided sometimes, but maybe my perception is wrong here. Nhprman 00:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't care anymore. It's obvious to me that merely saying "This user is a transhumanist", "This user is a feminist", "This user is a communist", "This user is a Christian", etc cannot objectively be construed as "divisive and inflammatory". If the position identified were one that would cause outrage in most civilised gatherings, such as "This user is a Nazi" or "This user is a pedophile", the situation would be different. They clearly fall under T1 and I would speedily delete anything like that on sight. There are going to be borderline situations, such as "This user is an anti-feminist" where some intolerance is displayed, rather than someone just identifying a belief that they have. In those situations, the community's interpretation is best ascertained through processes such as TfD, or through review if an admin does speedy them (and admins should then accept the outcome).
However, some admins evidently interpret T1 as covering any userbox - no matter how politely worded and non-provocative - if it identifies a political or religious view held by the user. To me, this is a bizarre and highly subjective interpretation, though I acknowledge that it is held in good faith, however inexplicably, by some admins whom I respect.
I even agree with their ultimate goal of getting such userboxes out of template space. I do dislike the way it's happening inconsistently. I also think it's very regrettable that it's happening even when there is a body of strongly felt, sincere, highly plausible, and in some cases obviously correct, opinion that a particular box does not fall under T1. When this happens, as it did here with the "User transhumanist" template, I ask the admins involved to understand that the review process exists as a safety net to catch their mistakes. Under existing policy and process, the "User transhumanist" template should have been restored. It should then have stayed restored, because the community would have spoken. Community views cannot override policy, but they should be deferred to when the interpretation of policy is genuinely at issue, particularly when the policy interpretation that was relied on was a strained highly subtle one in the first place.
So it goes. If no one is going to restore this template (and I for one have no intention of warring about it in that way), all I ask is that we at least modify the wording of the policy so it's clear. If the de facto policy is to be that templates expressing a political, religious, social, or similar position (however politely worded etc) are to be speedied on sight whether or not they are really "divisive and inflammatory", then let's write exactly that into the official policy. Let's abandon the fiction that the passions of reasonable people are inflamed by the mere words "I am a transhumanist", or "I am a feminist" or whatever. Metamagician3000 05:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
(MetaM3K, this is not to you specifically) I totally support changing the policy to make it clear, any userbox that states a political or religious opinion is T1able. Any. You gave the example of "User Nazi" being clearly divisive (because people consider Nazism pretty reprehensible at this point, presumably) but "User Communist" not being divisive. Well, guess what? I find Communism exactly as reprehensible as Nazism. My parents suffered greatly because of it, and more importantly, 20+M people died because of it. That statement is a POV on my part, not a fact, but the point stands, some people equate them as equally bad. Therefore If some people find Communism reprehensible it should go the way of Naziism. Ditto for Capitalism, and all the rest... And guess what? I'm Libertarian and I think it's wonderful, but I know there are people that find it reprehensible. So it must go too. Ditto for Democracy. As for religion: Some users think "This user is Catholic" to be innocuous... but there are those that haven't forgiven the church for Galileo so they find it reprehensible. So they ALL need to go, if one goes they all do. Change T1 to cover them all, however mainstream. We cannot discriminate. If we can't do it on our own, if we can't realise that on our own, then Jimbo has to do it, we need it done by fiat, I guess, but get it changed.
But guess what? I'm a process and policy wonk. T1 is what it is. Abide. Out of process stuff just torques people off, and the more you do it, the more annoyed people get. I'd think the whole Kelly Martin RfC fiasco demonstrated that pretty emphatically, but still, here we are. Again.
All you out of process deleters? Sorry, IAR is NOT your free pass. Get CSD T1 changed. That's where you should be spending your time. NOT doing out of process deletions. NOT closing TfD's early. NOT writing long defences for your indefensible actions. NOT ranting about how worthless DRVU is. NOT ranting about how stupid those of us that favour process are. Because that... that really sets me off. Process==fairness. Policy==fairness. IAR==unfairness and unhappy, unmotivated editors. I wish userboxes had never been invented. But they were. Deal. But deal properly. Sorry for the rant. ++Lar: t/c 13:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Go here, then. Metamagician3000 14:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
And so I have. Thanks for the nudge! (and so should others...) ++Lar: t/c 14:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Crappy pages are deleted all the time and their deletion is rarely challenged. Why is template space special? Recently we're seeing quite a lot of requests for review of page deletions that obviously made sense, and they will end up being kept deleted because the administrators who deleted them were doing a good job. Only the continued existence of this page continues to foster the misleading impression that there is something illegitimate or questionable about deleting rubbish from Wikipedia template space.

Templates are not sacrosanct. Bad templates will continue to be deleted. Those who persist in challenging those deletions are very much in a minority. --Tony Sidaway 14:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

No, they are not sancrosanct any more than any other type of page. But crappy pages of other sorts are deleted under applicable CSD criteria or challenged... Get T1 expanded. I support expansion to cover more types of divisiveness and silliness. But it's not expanded. Till then, I oppose out of process deletions, including these. Put your energy into getting T1 to cover these. Why is that so hard to understand? (although I support not having this page be special and give the appearance that "Templates are different"... )++Lar: t/c 14:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree that template deletion criteria will probably be expanded (and mostly as a result of these debates). However lots of non-template deletions are outwith out CSDs. Administrators use their common sense. --Tony Sidaway 14:32, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, my common sense tells me that there's no way in ... er ... hell that the simple statement "this user is a Christian", say, is divisive and inflammatory - it's not even inflammatory to me, a dyed-in-the-wool, but tolerant, atheist. "This user hates atheists" would be. Surely we can make that kind of distinction. Either template would be a waste of template space, but TfD is the proper place for the first one. Now, if you want to me to speedy templates like that and stop insisting on at least substantial compliance with process, why not comment here, as Lar has just done? Metamagician3000 14:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
This process, of speedying templates according to how T1 should be written, and then writing it in when it's shown wide acceptance for some time, is perfectly healthy and appropriate, IMO. Once the most divisive and inflammatory of the religious/political templates are gone, the criterion is rewritten according to what we've learned here, and the way is smoothed considerably for getting rid of the more middle-of-the-road ones. By then, everyone sees it coming (most already do), and everything gets substed, and there doesn't have to be all the drama.
The part where you start applying a rule, and then write it down when that goes well, rubs people the wrong way if they don't realize that's how it's supposed to work. I know I read it somewhere around here, but I haven't got a link. -GTBacchus(talk) 15:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we've gotten around to writing it down... :) --Tony Sidaway 15:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

So write it down then. Follow the link MM3K gave just above, put your oar in, get it done. I SUPPORT a broad T1 that enables and authorises deleting lots and lots of stuff. But I will oppose out of process, contentious and acrimonious deletions. Sorry, but I will. This presumably is why I did not get your support on my recent RfA, I made that quite clear, I'm a wonk, because my 25 years of community experience leads me to believe that following process and policy (instead of IAR) increases the perception of fairness and consistency, which is goodness. The time spent getting T1 changed will pay off in huge savings in not having these debates over and over. Why is that so hard to understand? ++Lar: t/c 15:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Lar, we're working on it. The more templates we speedy, the easier it becomes to write down. The more people oppose that good work, of path smoothing and laying a body of precedent, on procedural grounds, the longer it takes before it can be written down and actually stick.
I don't doubt your experience in community, and agree about process in many, many contexts. I don't want my government, for example, to function according to WP:IAR, or WP:BRD, or WP:SNOW, (WP:WOTTA!) but I don't think of Wikipedia as in any way like a government. We're not trying to establish social justice; we're trying to write an encyclopedia. Fairness and consistency aren't the point, WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR are, as applied to articles. Everything else matters only insofar as it serves those. Encouraging the expectation of a social justice system doesn't serve the encyclopedia. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:20, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. So I went and changed it. I believe in 1RR or even 0RR so if it gets changed back, so be it, as far as I am concerned, but the consensus seems clear enough now. It's time T1 changed to reflect this broader agreement that all this stuff does not belong in template space, so I did. I still oppose out of process, though, and will continue to do so. ++Lar: t/c 16:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Well done! Let's see how this pans out. If we can make a reasonable revision of T1 stick, it will save a lot of grief in the long run, and I totally agree that we should have proper processes in place so that people know where they stand. Metamagician3000 00:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion/closing of DRVU

While I'm sure it's flattering to the egos on both sides of this "war" to have it here, it is probably past time to close this page and return these to their former place on Deletion Review. Thoughts? -- nae'blis (talk) 18:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Support

  • Starting to think that makes sense... other things aren't typically broken out this way for long periods of time, are they? ++Lar: t/c 18:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree 100%. The community is unaware of the existance on this page and it is striking that templates that easily survive TfD are absolutely butchered there.  Grue  15:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  • More importantly, this page was set up because a torrent of entries were pouring into DRV in MarkSweep's days. I would consider only two editors (both blocked at the moment) really interested in continuing the Userbox Wars, so that should no longer be true; and more eyes on these questions would help. Septentrionalis 02:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Don't "delete" the page (histories could come in helpful in later disputes), but I do think it's time to close it. Having it here is merely adding fuel to the fire. AmiDaniel (talk) 03:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Agree with Grue. TheJabberwʘck 06:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • This page is leading to more hurt feelings than it is avoiding (which is the proclaimed goal, unless I am mistaken). As per Grue, no one even knows this page exists (I found it completely by accident), and it is clear that any userbox that makes its way here is bound to be deleted regardless of previous TfDs, simply because it is always the same anti-userbox people voting over and over again. This is not a sustainable method to resolve the userbox problem which needs some solid policy, not isolated actions like this. IronChris | (talk) 06:51, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Agree with Grue. TfDs are one things. People who care about an article will become aware of their existence. The problem with this is that the templates are usually speedied first and then debated, leaving no notices to inform people of the debates. A slightly better method would be to have the templates exist until the debate finishes, then speedy them. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

[edit] Other

[edit] Comments

Why is this a poll already?--Sean Black (talk) 05:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I wasn't intended my statement of support to be the start of a poll, it was just a comment! ++Lar: t/c 10:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Naeblis' comment received four immediate agreements before this was set up as a poll. This is fundamentally a yes/no question; it seemed useful to see arguments against (if any) separately. (Ami's comment that history should be preserved, and this should be a merge rather than a deletion, is of course right; but such modifications will come out of the discussion, however formatted.) Septentrionalis 16:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:User No Marxism

Am I correct that a sustained speedy deletion of this template would mean that it is acceptable to repeatedly delete userboxes, ignoring the previous DRV/U decision, until there is a vote sustaining the deletion? TheJabberwʘck 21:19, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I would disagree with your description of the situation. I would note, however, that policy changes over time, and it is not unheard of for, say, an article to be deleted when it had been kept in previous AfDs, or for an article which had been speedily deleted once turned into a successful stub. Consensus changes over time. Mackensen (talk) 22:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  • It's not as if rapid redeletion were occurring, in any case. Some six weeks elapsed between the close of a deletion debate and the most recent speedy deletion of Template:User No Marxism. During that same period, quite a lot happened. On March 30, the Arbitration Committee returned a finding of fact that CSD T1 was Wikipedia policy, for instance. Speedy deletion under T1 has gained increasing acceptability and the results of the few challenges since then have reflected that by strongly supporting nearly all T1 speedies that have been challenged. --Tony Sidaway 10:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I've closed both this and User:UBX/Communist as "keep deleted" because they were attracting a stupidly high number of endorsements. --Tony Sidaway 22:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Goal

Perhaps it would bew helpful if I said what I wanted out of all this; I don't want retention of all userboxes; I have usually agreed with the landslide Keep deleteds and not bothered to pile on.

    • Speedy deletions should be name under some definite criterion of CSD.
    • When there is any reasonable doubt whether thay apply, the box should be sent to TfD.
    • The normal deletion should be preceeded by asking the user not to flaunt userboxes of his political or religious views.
    • Where some rewording to neutral ;anguage is practical, as has been suggested for Templare:User Christian, it should be tried.

Comments/ Septentrionalis 05:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User varied sex

What the hell? The template User varied sex was up for less than 6 hours and then got archived, despite the discussion not having reached a concensus! 13 keep deleted vs. 10 undelete is NOT a concensus (11 undeletes if only I had had the time to finish writing my vote). All that because Tony Sidaway thinks it is "simply stupid"... Wow, what an argument. Tony, your edit summary when closing the debate "Closed, it isn't going to get restored, so no point in discussion" doesn't seem worthy of an admin. Who has decided that it wouldn't get restored? You? "No point in discussion"... well, if that was a policy in Wikipedia, it would be a rather sad encyclopedia. Please, let me post my vote here as I didn't have time to do so before the discussion was unilaterally dismissed :

  • Undelete and list at TfD, per silence. I find it rather funny, and that's what it was intended for. By the way Tony, "beyond stupid" is not an argument, it's POV. This is a debate, not a "I-think-this-userbox-is-stupid-let's-speedy-it" fraud (or is it?).

I am starting to seriously believe that the latter is rather more accurate to describe this "project". IronChris | (talk) 22:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I nominated the thing here - and I accept Tony's reasoning. It was stupid of me. It is trivial, I should just have let it be. So, I'm happy that we just all more on now.--Doc ask? 22:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:ENC and stop fighting to keep unencyclopedic templates around. It's not worth it. --Cyde Weys 22:40, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Note that I am not against deleting userboxes, on the contrary, so you needn't send me to WP:ENC. It's just that there is no policy as of yet regarding which should stay and which shouldn't, and that's the reason why I oppose these arbitrary and sporadic deletions, which can come to nothing constructive in the long run. Our efforts should first be directed towards creating a policy, and then we can start systematically deleting unsuitable userboxes. I think silence has voiced the rest of my opinions below so I needn't carry on about it. IronChris | (talk) 04:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

There is indeed a point where an issue is so fatuous as to be unworthy of debate. I submit that the proposal to undelete that template is one such. --Tony Sidaway 00:04, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I doubt anyone would have opposed you making such a comment to the bottom of the ongoing discussion, Tony, and letting other users voice their support or dissent regarding that view. The problem arises when you take your personal opinion on a clearly contentious issue (as shown both by the discussion and votecount) on which you have a very strong opinion, and decide not to join the discussion, but simply to unilaterally silence everyone who disagrees with you. As I pointed out, WP:DRV is a review of process, not a "backdoor TfD", and the template being discussed, regardless of whether it should ultimately be deleted or not, clearly does not fall under any existing speedy-deletion criterion (it is not "divisive and inflammatory", T1, nor does it express anything approaching an opinion or view or belief, T2, therefore, combined with the fact that the speedy-deletion had been disputed by a large number of users, showing that a TfD discussion would probably be very fruitful for clearing up policy and consensus on the issue), so an undelete and nomination at TfD was probably warranted (after the DRV had been given more time, obviously, and assuming that the votes continued to be pretty evenly split, which is hard to tell from the initial voting trend).
  • If you disagreed with any of my points, I would have welcomed a response, and was (and am) willing to be persuaded that this is such a dangerous and destructive template that it is vitally important for it to be deleted as rapidly as possible despite existing policies and process, if you can substantiate such a view. But simply out-of-process speedy-closing DRVs you dislike is not productive, as it will cause more argument than if we'd simply let process run its course (much as the speedy itself caused more argument than if the template had simply been TfDed like normal), and will raise tensions unnecessarily. Many useboxes may be close to useless, but a bunch of colored rectangular pixels aren't what's tearing this community apart and causing such hostility and hate: it's the lack of respect being shown, by both sides, for each other and for existing policy and process. It will be impossible to restore a calm, reasonable, and efficient userbox deletion-reviewing process if we continue to fail to assume good faith and continue to consider our personal opinions the only important ones. I am not just talking about this specific template: this is not an isolated incident, but an obvious trend of increasingly arbitrary decisions and decreasingly communicative editors, and it will continue to be nothing but a destructive influence on the goodwill and reasonableness of everyone involved as long as it is encouraged by heedless, factionalized "ends justify the means"-style thinking. -Silence 01:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree that lack of respect for process is "tearing this community apart". Process for its own sake is never right. There are a few editors who don't appreciate this and their perception of what is happening may be somewhat distorted as a consequence, giving rise to claims that the community editing wikipedia is being riven asunder as a result of failure slavishly to adhere to process.
You speak of a "calm, reasonable, and efficient userbox deletion-reviewing process" as a desirable goal. but it's clear to me and, I'm sure, a number of other experienced editors, that the problem is the obsessive review of speedy deletions of templates. The daily speedy deletion of many hundreds of rubbish articles attracts no such review, so the view of some that speedy deletion of rubbish templates should be routinely reviewed is somewhat difficult to defend. --Tony Sidaway
It looks to me that deletion review has become seen as necessary because so many disagree about others' interpretation of T1, unlike the "normal" CSDs which don't have such problems because they were built with clear community consensus. I don't think there's anything unreasonable in wanting to voice disagreements about interpretations. --AySz88^-^ 02:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
No, look for yourself at recent reviews on T1-deleted templates: "communist", "no marxism", "antiuserboxdeletion", "against Saud", "admins ignoring policy", and many more, all kept deleted, and only a very small proportion of such deletions were successfully challenged, . The reviews were only necessary insasmuch as they must eventually convince those who think that T1 is controversial that it has in fact got very, very strong community support. --Tony Sidaway 03:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
The current reviews (Atheist/Christian/Hell/Dictator/Elitist) are also examples of cases where there is controversy over the interpretation of T1, and I count approximately 1/5 overturn which isn't quite "very small proportion" in my view. As long as if someone speedying things based on the assumption that T1 is no longer controversial would result in Userbox Wars III, those deletions are still controversial enough for more discussion, i.e. reviews. (And I wouldn't operate on the assumption that most people agree on the more-deletion interpretations of T1 until there's been a clearer guage of consensus.) --AySz88^-^ 03:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
This thing wasn't necessarily divisive ... it was just rubbish. So there's no need to worry about interpretation of T1 here. As Tony says, hundreds of rubbish articles are deleted every day and not every one of them is brought to WP:DRV. If anything, unencyclopedic templates are less important than articles, not more. --Cyde Weys 03:01, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
For "not every one of them" read "hardly any of them". --Tony Sidaway 03:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Ah yes, of course. --Cyde Weys 03:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
  • There is something very wrong with the Userbox DRV, IMO. I'm reading this policy page: Wikipedia:Undeletion policy. I notice two things: "A page listed for undeletion should remain on DRV for at least five days." If this one didn't, then there's a problem. I also notice that the policy makes it clear that if something was obviously deleted out of process (speedied, but not a speedy candidate), it should be speedilly restored. Really, the ONLY question for this DRV should have been, "was the speedy proper"? Really, it has to be that way. 50% can keep something deleted on DRV, wheras it takes a consensus (70%ish, depending on what day it is) to delete the thing through the regular TFD process. So if an administrator WANTS something deleted that is hovering right around that 50% mark and has no chance of ever getting a consensus one way or the other, all they have to do is improperly speedy it. Obviously, I want this userbox gone. But more than that, I want the procedure to be followed and I don't like it when people skirt the rules. The only question in my mind when reviewing a speedy delete is whether the item deleted met one of the criteria in WP:CSD. To introduce any other issue is to abuse the process. BigDT 03:38, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

You have misread the undeletion policy, and misinterpreted the role of process in Wikipedia. Crap gets deleted. --Tony Sidaway 04:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Once again, you deserve the barnstar of constructive and convincing arguments, Tony... You're really helping the debate, as usual. IronChris | (talk) 04:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Which barnstar shall we award him? I'm thinking of the rotating one ... you want this to be a co-barnstar? I agree, I think he deserves one as well. --Cyde Weys 04:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Please tell me what I have misread and what I have misinterpreted. If something does not meet the WP:CSD, what policy is there that permits an administrator to disregard the policy and speedy it anyway? In this particular case, an improper speedy looks and smells (even if it may have been unintended) like forum shopping. BigDT 13:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

You say it's an improper speedy, but there was nothing improper about it. A bit of juvenilia was deleted from the template space, as it should have been. That's what Wikipedia does with crap. That is Wikipedia's deletion policy. --Tony Sidaway 20:04, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly right, it's more important that crap get deleted than it is that policy be followed. All the huffing and puffing over this is such a waste of time considering it has not a single thing to do with writing an encyclopedia. Why aren't people out writing or fighting vandals or something? How can people rationalize spending so much time defending junk like this? Rx StrangeLove 00:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
How can people rationalize spending so much time deleting harmless stuff like this? TheJabberwʘck 04:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
The assertion that they are harmless is not shared by everyone and the deletion of something that has nothing to do with writing an encyclopedia should really be pretty uncontroversial. Rx StrangeLove 04:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
You've hit the nail on the head and I agree with this. But let me add a layer to this discussion (and perhaps answer Iamthejabberwock's question) and say yes, the User Varied Sex box may be controversial AS A TEMPLATE, and it will be subject to community discussion and possible deletion. But by adopting a policy that deletes ALL userboxes from the Template space and moves them to the User space, it puts them beyond the scope of that community debate, and makes it a purely personal choice whether to use a box or not. If they are housed in User space and placed in a central location for people to use the code on their user pages (as proposed by WP:MACK) then these deletion debates simply go away. (Although I have to say that some folks will still strongly discourage boxes like this. I'm sure Jimbo is among that number.) - Nhprman 16:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why even bother with the TFD if the consensus is just going to just be totally ignored?

I refer to Wp:tfd#Template:User_sumofpi and Wp:tfd#Template:User_Sumofpi2.

In the case of the former, there were 24 keep votes and a whopping FOUR delete votes. Most people who expressed any other meaningful sentiments at all clearly understood that they were voting to keep the template itself, not just the content. Yet, the closing administrator completely disregarded the voting process and deleted the template.

In the case of the latter, 21 people voted to keep it. Six voted to userfy or delete it. Again, those who expressed an opinion from which an understanding can be derived seemed to understand that they were voting to keep the template itself, not just the content. Yet, the closing admin deleted the template.

So I ask - why are we even bothering to vote? I have endeavored to consider each userbox on its merits. In a number of cases, I have voted to delete them or even suggested that they should be speedied. Why am I even bothering if the administrators will completely disregard the consensus and do whatever they feel like doing?

BigDT 20:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree with you, but it would take so long to fix the system that it's not worth it. My advice (I elaborated on BigDT's talk page) is to wait for Wikipedia:Userbox policy or similar to be completed, and then work on undoing the harm done. TheJabberwʘck 04:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Allow me to draw your attention to WP:MACK, where some of us, tentatively, are trying to do just that. Mackensen (talk) 15:17, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

This is why I have stopped voting completely. The userbox "wars" are a big waste of time since admins ignore consensus and delete whatever userboxes go against their personal beliefs.--God Ω War 06:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

If we stop voting, templates will be again deleted after one or two delete votes, and it will be called "consensus". Well, at present some users seem to call this way a lost 4-21 vote but if we keep voting, the "consensus" quality is at least visible. Friendly Neighbour 07:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

First, there is no "voting" on Wikipedia, so tallying up the comments and saying "X voted this way, and Y voted this way, so X should win" is pointless and misleading. Second, some users are deliberately weighing in on the merits of the content of each box, rather than the concept behind the deletion, or they simply are attacking the nominators, which does no good. In any case, a reasonable discussion on the issue of where to house the Userboxes would be welcomed and everyone should be part of that discussion. Lastly, I have to say that when 61% of the people weigh in on an issue like the last proposal to solve the Userbox problem, and then to have people STILL say it "fails" to find consensus, we need to seriously reconsider what "consensus" means. Is it 66.6%? 80%? 100%? It think those numbers are unrealistic in a vast, diverse group like Wikipedians, and I hope people don't expect that from the newest proposal, WP:MACK. Nhprman 16:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious, what DO you think "consensus" means? Wikipedia's definition is skewed from the usual (unanimity, or no opposition), but rough consensus is used for the purposes of getting things done. It doesn't mean 50%+1, or 51%, or even 66% (usually). In RfAs it means 80% (or close to it), and for Bureaucrats it's even higher. AfD pegs it at 3:1, but DRV is an abberation in Wikipedia in using "majority" rule, mainly to keep from cycling things back and forth between DRV and AFD. Policies are even more confusing, as they tend to get adopted by the "propose, discuss, slap-a-policy-tag-on-it, if-not-reverted-then-it's-policy" method. How do you cut the Gordian knot? -- nae'blis (talk) 20:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
The obvious consense was to keep the template on some of those deleted templates, mainly the Pi ones. I disagree with the assertion that the people just meant the content and not the template. People often do not differentiate between the two. If a user votes to keep something, they generally mean keep it, not fix it for the current users and delete it anyway. While I can see the reasoning behind most of the current deletions being debated currently, those two obviously should never have been deleted in the first place. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 00:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I think I'm going to bring up an RfC against some of the admins after I talk with them. Would you go along with it? --mboverload@ 16:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Only in cases such as this, and maybe that Christian userbox thing in regards to Cyde and Gmaxwell. I believe Mackensen took a good approach in deleting and protecting that particular template. In general, I figure that most of their decisions were at least somewhat supported, though maybe slightly bias. It's just this particular issue of deleting templates clearly voted on to be kept that irks me. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 17:08, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I have just left a message with him and after further review I think it will only be a request for comment and will not claim any wrong-doing of any of the admins. Assume Good Faith =O --mboverload@ 17:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I always tried to assume good faith, but it seems that a few admins are currently on a powertrip. They have a fixed view of what userboxes should be (deleted and gone if possible, especially if they are slighly controversial, i.e. anything regarding religion/believes/political or sexual orientation/ basically anything you can make a good argument about on the net). When they ignore TfD results is only the tip of the iceberg (well, they have - as they should - leerway regarding the votes but a clear supermajority also indicates consensus). What is even worse that they just Speedy-delete Userboxes - even if they have been kept by a TfD before, even if they have been restored by Deletion review after a speedy before (after being kept by TfD) - basically they have their views how things should be and enforce them claing T1 or T2 or WP:IAR. I hope should I ever get adminship here that I'd be strong enough to resisit the temptation to violate WP:POINT to hit them with a Clue-by-four. 84.145.234.98 01:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Add WP:SNOW to their reasons for deleting or keeping these deleted on DRVU. Ansell Review my progress! 06:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mackensen's Proposal

NB: This was originally from a DRV discussion, but needs its own heading

  • Comment. Let's be clear about this: administrators have always been given leeway in interpreting *fD, based on policy concerns. My principal motive here is to end the Userbox Wars for good. They could be over tomorrow. I think this would be a beneficial result; we could all go back to the article space where we belong. There are, to my mind, two principal factions: there are users, largely long-time sysops, who abhor userboxes in the template namespace. Part of this is a legitimate concern about vote-stacking. They also feel it sends the wrong message. I think I'm safe in saying that, at this point, keeping most userboxes in the template namespace is a non-starter for this group. Now, the other "faction" is numerous on Wikipedia, but counts few administrators. This has contributed, in my view, to a culture of misunderstanding, which is unfortunate. They view userboxes as a legitimate tool of self-expression; while I do not agree, I must respect this view. Attempts to remove the userboxes from the template namespace have been treated as censorship; I think most admins would disavow any such inclinations, but that's what it looks like, and we have not been as communicative as we could have. So. Where to compromise? I think the answer obvious. We subst all userboxes onto userpages and then delete them from the template namespace. This way, everyone has their boxes. Lists of template code can be maintained so long as there is no transclusion going on. This will satisfy the sysops, of that I am sure. I would call this a Burkean peace–Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord fomented...It is simple peace; sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. Boxes for all, but not in the template namespace. On your userpages they are safe forever, and sysops will quake no more. How about it? Is there anyone else out there who could agree to such an idea? Mackensen (talk) 21:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Per request, I've moved all this to Wikipedia:Mackensen's Proposal. Mackensen (talk) 22:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I applaud any effort to end the Userbox Wars. Septentrionalis 02:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Just a note. I think WP:MACK better addresses where we are NOW than the others do. One of them, the last, is effectively dead. Misza13's is still in development and is very simliar to Mackensen's Proposal. - Nhprman 04:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
  • And Wikipedia:Userbox policy? I would recommend this one to any userbox fan for this portion: "[Userboxes] may not contain images or language deliberately inflammatory, destructive, or obscene." I find this a much better compromise than either T2 or Mack's proposal. But I definitely think people should be focusing on the proposals, rather than on deleting the userboxes right now. Iamthejabberwock 17:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Has anybody else noticed that a lot of the DRV/U discussions are being closed very early? DRV is, according to policy, a 5 day process - minimum. Note that a large number of the archived discussions do not meet this very basic criteria. There is a reason that so many DRV/U discussions end in delete - they are closed as keep deleted early and often, regardless of the discussion itself. This is not how consensus works, and is a gross violation of wikipedia's founding principles, is it not? --70.218.112.4 04:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC) (please do not delete this important question)

I've closed a lot of them according to the Snowball clause because they seemed to be particularly fatuous and there was unanimous or near-unanimous opposition to overturning the deletion. If a huge number of editors, particularly administrators, endorse a speedy deletion, it's usually considered to be beyond argument. When the item deleted isn't even an article or anything that could ever be part of an article, it's a little academic, really. It doesn't stand much chance of thriving on Wikipedia in the face of organised and determined opposition. --Tony Sidaway 04:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The difference may be academic, but shutting off discussion forcefully because of a disputed, if not against consensus essay (ie, SNOW) is more troublesome than it is worth. Maybe things would calm down if people just let things run the way they have been setup to run instead of trying to force their opinions on everything. Ansell Review my progress! 05:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict)WP:SNOW is not even a policy. How does that trump official DRV policy. which clearly states 5 to 10 days? Closing in 24-48 hours does not allow much room for discussion. That is why there is an official policy that demands 5-10 days. Please adhere to it. --PrezDispenser 05:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Anybody who disputes the Snowball clause probably doesn't understand it. It can only ever be invoked when the outcome of a discussion is obvious. To describe it as "against consensus" would be missing the point, somewhat. A bit like those chaps who complain about articles protected on "the wrong version.
If you want to appeal on this, please take it to the Arbitration Committee. I don't think they will be impressed by you suggestion that all discussions must go on any longer than is necessary to establish that an administrator did what needed to be done. --Tony Sidaway 05:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Hang on there. You have quoted a policy that goes against the official page policy for DRV, and someone states a good reason, ie, discussion time for getting a good idea of what is thought about an issue, and you bring up ArbCom. Where did that come from. He wasn't suggesting that they go on longer than necessary, just that the person who wrote the official policy might have actually chosen a good length of time, and you are using a totally non-official policy to ignore that. Calm down now. User:Ansell 05:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I have quoted no policy. Someone has quoted a bit of process that is routinely ignored when the outcome is obvious. Why do you say "calm down now"? --Tony Sidaway 05:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, someone quoted official Undeletion Policy, and you quoted a so-called popular essay as your rationale for violating this policy. "Calm down now" is just a paraphrase of Jimbo's own opinion on the whole matter. --Bloody Brilliant 05:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I said calm down now because you had a tone that was extremely defensive, "take it to arbitration commission". Also as above, it is a paraphrase of the disclaimer given by Jimbo when he spake and reverted to keep T1. User:Ansell 06:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Whatever.  :) --Tony Sidaway 06:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DRV

For reasons not well understood by me or anyone I know, template review discussions were once redirected to a sub-page. As there don't seem to be any extant sensible discussions I've moved them back to Deletion review. --Tony Sidaway 06:36, 26 May 2006 UTC

You meant "...userbox review discussions were once redirected to a sub-page."? The userboxes were given a subpage when massive discussions like {{user review}} or {{user admins ignoring policy}} were visiting there and constituted a major portion of DRV, effectively disrupting its normal operations. They're no longer very active, so it's a good idea to go back to DRV. What about the WP:UBD shortcut? Misza13 T C 09:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Would someone be kind enough to move the debates onto the main page. Deleting the history makes it hard to find this information, and it is relevant. Ansell Review my progress! 09:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tony Sidaway should be Banned from Userbox Deletion

Too many DRV's closed improperly, without any good reason, means he should be banned from closing deletion debates, deletion reviews, and any other userbox related matters. He should also be banned from speedy deleting such content. Even the son of god needs to learn a lesson now and then. --Tonyphile 04:12, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

This user believes Tonee is the new Messiah.


So then who was the old messiah? Dun dun duuuuuun..... (And I can't seem to format this comment to go below this userbox, but just to be clear, im responding to it, I didn't put it there)Homestarmy 04:16, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

More seriously, the user who made this "tonyphile" is clearly someone's sockpuppet, which I have half a mind to block given its sarcastic attacking user name. If the sockpuppeter wants anyone to take the claim seriously, they should file an RfC with their real account. JoshuaZ 04:19, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

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