Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Once upon a time...

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

The result of the debate was delete the project, keep the user pages. (Radiant) 09:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Once upon a time...

This page is linked from the Wikipedia:Department of Fun. It was/is an attempt to write a story on Wikipedia. It is inactive. It is also questionable whether it should be here even if active--Wikipedia is WP:NOT a site for writing original stories and poems.

Also included in this nomination are the following two user subpages:

• User:Gkhan/Chapter 1 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (no substantive edits in over a year)
• User:WBardwin/Chapter (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (no substantive edits in 6 months, all additions by WBardwin)

See similar MfD Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtionSong/World's Longest Poem (second nomination).

--Doug Bell ^talk 02:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: This is actually the second nomination of this page. The first one was a year and a half ago at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Once upon a time... and closed as an overwhelming keep. --tjstrf talk 02:10, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• Neutral. If it's just going to be inactive, it's not helpful. But I don't see how this hurt anything to begin with. Transwiki might be the correct option if it were still active, but as is, maybe we could tag it as historical? --tjstrf talk 02:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete. WP:NOT#OR: "Wikipedia is not a place to publish your own thoughts and analyses or to publish new information not heretofore published," nor "original inventions," nor "[p]ersonal essays or [b]logs." WP:NFT: "Wikipedia is not a free wiki host for you to use for your own purposes. It's an encyclopedia. Our primary goal here is to write an encyclopedia, not to provide free web hosting to people. Even if your article isn't taking up much space, you are still misusing Wikipedia and preventing it from becoming a usable encyclopedia." The overriding purpose of this website is to build an encyclopedia, and things that subtract, slow down, and take away from that purpose do not have a place here. Editors contributing to this story could be contributing manhours towards articles and useful environments. — Whedonette (ping) 02:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete per Whedonette. Nonsense and offensive content. Of no benefit to the encyclopedia, and is totally unrelated. Yuser31415^@? 04:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment WP:NOR does not strictly apply to Wikipedia space. Our policies, for example, are all based on original research of Wikipedia's needs and behaviours. --tjstrf talk 04:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Per WP:NFT and WP:USER this page should be deleted. It's not benefitting the encyclopedia so WP:IAR doesn't apply. Also an inactive project is simply wasting Wikipedia server space. Yuser31415^@? 04:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Are you seriously suggesting that only WP:IAR lets us use original research in Wikipedia-space? Your server space argument is a misconception, seeing that it's still on the server even if it's deleted. I am neutral on this, but could you use arguments that actually apply to the situation? --tjstrf talk 04:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
        • No, that's not what I mean. If the article benefitted the 'cyclopedia, then WP:IAR would apply. But since the article certainly doesn't, it should be deleted outright. Look, I realize that Wikipedians are normal people; they need entertainment just like everybody else, and Wikipedia's a great place for it, if the game actually benefits the encyclopedia. I would probably vote keep on a game that required users to make improvements to articles. Yuser31415^@? 20:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 08:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: this is just plain silliness - if you want policy, WP:NOT a place for social networking, and this distracts horribly from the encyclopaedia. I am becoming ever more convinced that the wretched Department of Fun is causing far more harm than good. Slay all related subpages as well. Burn with fire, lots and lots of fire. Moreschi 19:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Moreschi pretty much said anything useful I might have said myself. | Mr. Darcy talk 20:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Irrelevant to writing an encyclopedia. JChap2007 03:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Moreschi, who seems to be turning into my mouthpiece in these matters... riana_dzasta 04:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep -- although the project never got off the ground, note that USER PAGES are being targeted for deletion. Part of the agreement with Wikipedia users is to allow them to create user pages for their own and common use. As such they are private property and I do not want my user page deleted. If the concensus is that the Once Upon a Time Project be deleted, user pages should be retained. See established Wikipedia guideline -- Ownership and editing of pages in the user space in Wikipedia:User page. WBardwin 06:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

  Comment: You have some misconceptions regarding user pages. For example, the User page guideline you reference states in WP:USER#Ownership and editing of pages in the user space: pages in user space still do belong to the community. Also from that page: Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal homepage. And from WP:USER#Removal: In excessive cases, your user subpage may be deleted, following a listing on Miscellany for deletion, subject to deletion policy. —Doug Bell ^talk 06:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, sorry, Wikipedia is not a web host and even user pages should have some general connection with the encyclopedia. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Revised: Delete project page, keep the use pages, per several below. (I'd still strongly encourage the editors of the user pages to put them up for speedy deletion at creator request). —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, per the others,_Seadog ^♪ 16:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. WBardwin was mistaken about userpage policy, and the page in his space certainly isn't private property. But please don't take that as a reason to delete his harmless userpage, as one thing doesn't have to do with another. I ask people to consider this part of the userpage policy:

"The Wikipedia community is generally tolerant and offers fairly wide latitude in applying these guidelines to regular participants. Particularly, community-building activities that are not strictly "on topic" may be allowed, especially when initiated by committed Wikipedians with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the encyclopedia."

I think everybody who's been here for a while could give their own examples of userpages that are purely for fun (="building the community"). I've had some egregious examples in my own space, notably User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder, which those of you who've been here long enough may remember seeing on the front page on April 1, 2005. Nobody ever offered to delete that one, in fact it was nominated on WP:FAC at one point. ;-) I assert that playful nonsense of such a type in the userspace is actually useful for the encyclopedia. User:Filiocht argued once that editing "European toilet paper holder" had relieved his wikistress to the point where he changed his mind about leaving, and cheerfully hung around for an additional number of months, producing more Featured articles. Altogether, while that nonsense was active, the habitual editors of it (who included User:Giano) produced a remarkable number of FAs. I appreciate that the userpages in question here are inactive, but presumably their purpose was originally similar: fun, relaxation, a creative break in the serious business of wiki-editing, a reculer pour mieux sauter (red? a red link? I don't know what to do about that!) of editing. Please show that the wikipedia community is indeed generally tolerant. To give the eminently serious and productive editor WBardwin a slap for letting his hair down seems to me just like thoughtless mistreatment of a good user. Is this something to make him leave over? :-( (PS. There's no need to nominate "European toilet paper holder" for deletion, btw; it was deleted at my request long ago, and I've only temporarily recreated it as an example--I'll delete it again in a day or two.) Bishonen | talk 21:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC).

• Keep Wikipedia has flexible not strident rules; we should be accommodating of other people's quirks; proposing something like this for deletion without commenting on any talk page is not civil; and nomination without discussion can also be seen as an attempt to make a point rather than build consensus. --Trödel 23:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
• Comment There seems to be some misunderstanding here regarding user space vs. project space. These user pages exist as part of the Wikipedia eponymous department of fun page for this MfD. The fact that some of the pages exist in user space is really not the issue. The issue is whether to have a subproject here on book writing, regardless of namespace. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Then why not nominate the Wikipedia namespace article and deal with the user pages seperately instead of in one submission. --Trödel 02:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Because it's irrelevant that whether the chapters of the story are in user space or project space. The issue is, as I state above, whether to have a subproject here on book writing. The chapters are part of that project. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete the page in project namespace (that's not what the project namespace is for) keep user pages (harmless fun in semi-private space is perfectly OK). Zocky | picture popups 02:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete "Once upn a time and" KEEP the user subpages. And everyone lived happily ever after. . . . Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 02:41, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Once upon a time there was a rather silly and unhelpful project page... A happy ending for this story would be delete! ><RichardΩ612 ^ER 21:12, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep the user pages. BRMo 10:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep all pages in this nomination. I believe the Department of Fun was called "wretched" earlier in the page. Well, I say that a Wikipedia where all editors must constantly work as information-adding robots would be far more wretched than any attempt to alleviate the monotony. In addition, if you feel that it's distracting to you, don't go there or pay attention to it. There's no need for juvenile attempts to destroy other people's work because you stumbled across it and do not like it; simply never go there again if it bothers you. Rogue 9 18:12, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

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