User:Calton/User Page Abuse

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This is about what I view as wide-scale abuse of Wikipedia User Pages, as well as my concerns about one particular admin -- RHaworth (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights) -- and his poor judgment in enabling this abuse.

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[edit] Inappropriate userfication

Recently, while looking at the cut-and-paste userfications of TruthbringerToronto (talk · contribs) -- apparently part of his ongoing quest to save any tidbit of content, no matter how ludicrously inappropriate, even if it violates GFDL -- I stumbled over what I consider a bigger problem, namely a longstanding practice -- not just by him -- inappropriate userfication.

Now, User-page guidelines says:

Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with the Wikipedia project. It is a mistake to think of it as a homepage: Wikipedia is not a free host, webspace provider, or social networking site.

and

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. Your page is about you as a Wikipedian.

I went and checked the Move log, and was appalled to find boatloads of vanity articles and obvious speedies were being moved by many admins to User pages -- content that was clearly intended to use Wikipedia for advertising/publicity/vanity. I went back and copied several month's worth, to see how far this practice went.

[edit] RHaworth's moves

One admin who particularly stuck out was RHaworth (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights) who not only makes a regular habit of this, but would leave messages using a template which read, before I altered it:

It is felt that the article you created at [[{{ARTICLE}}]] is not suitable for a Wikipedia article, which must have a notable subject and be verifiable. I have moved it to [[User:{{PAGENAME}}]], which is where users are free to write about themselves. You are at liberty to move it back into the (Main) namespace but bear in mind that if you do so, it is likely to be nominated for deletion. As a user page it is likely to survive untouched.

Note the last sentence, which -- against policy, practice, and common sense -- encouraged these vanity/speedy/spammers to use Wikipedia as some kind of webhost/MySpace Lite. In effect, "Hey, here's how to game the system…."

(And before anyone asks, yes, User Pages are picked up by Google. See here and here for obvious examples.)

I decided to do some deeper research: I created a list of RHaworth's page moves from December onward (about 400+), and checked out the first 102 pages and users he moved from then, with the idea six-eight months was enough time to see how and what these users actually have contributed to Wikipedia. The results, first, about the User Pages:

[edit] Eye-glazing statistics

  • User Pages examined: 102
Vanity pages
How many were STILL vanity pages/spam/speedy candidates? :
  • Yes: 80 (79.2%)
  • Maybe: 14 (13.9%)
  • No: 5 (5.0%)
  • Deleted/Unknown: 3 (3.0%)

In other words, the vast majority these alleged user pages are undisguised vanity articles, shouldn't have been userfied to begin with, and are STILL -- even after several months -- floating out there, untouched.

[edit] Random samples

Of course, calling them " undisguised vanity articles" reflects my judgment of what constitutes a vanity page, so some samples, chosen more or less randomly (pages #20, 40, 60, & 80, alphabetically by user):

  • Bryce Beverlin II (talk · contribs) (originally Deathproj):
(december 2000 - present) created by bryce beverlin II and kurt welshinger. [deathproj] is a work in progress that employs experimental film and video processes to construct a story of demise, departure and disillusion. the fantastical core story of larotza is woven and sculpted, branded and sanded, crafted with both real and scripted events from a magical tree to a ride in the fog to the death of howard rapach. the process of creating the deathproj is also central to it's aesthetic as a complex progressive work.
College Predator Synopsis
By Todd A. Hemming
01-15-2006
The story starts in Central Minnesota with brutal cold winters and numerous snow storms or blizzards. During the years of 2001 to 2003, numerous college students were abducted and never found in eastern Wisconsin and Minnesota. Few of these crimes have been solved and most of the bodies of the victims have never been recovered.
The stories protagonists are a factory worker from central Minnesota with medium capabilities. A FBI profiler from northern Virginia who specializes in profiling serial killers and who has apprehended some predators back east. The leader of the group is a rural sheriff’s deputy from Southeastern Arizona… [286 more words of Hollywood story pitch follow, including "@ Todd A. Hemming 2005"]
  • Pablo1950 (talk · contribs) (originally Pablo M. Falcón):
Pablo M. Falcón. (1950). PhD Psychology, 1976 Electric bass guitar. Canary Islands Groups (since 1963): Falcon's, Kiowas, Murciélagos, Playmates, Orquesta Sta. Brígida. University of Madrid Teacher. First International Trainer of American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA). Theater author. Psycodramatist. Former president SHEDI (Sociedad Humanista Española Desarollo Integral), SEPTG (Sociedad española de psicoterapia y técnicas de grupo), SEPP (Sociedad española de Psicología Preventiva).
  • Yourika (talk · contribs) (originally Alexander paul morris, Tymorapro, and Yourika, or so the Move Log has it):
Yourika Corp. and its founder, Alexander Paul Morris, is the creator of the highly-acclaimed tymoraPRO Trading Platform, which defines the next generation of charting, analytics, alerts, and execution by studying every trade, bid, offer, and even how other Players "move". tymoraPRO is the ultimate tape reading tool for assessing the Real - Time Technical and Psychological make-up of the Market and its Participants, and can identify trading opportunities in stocks, forex, and eminis. [255 more words of market-speak follow, as well as 10 external links]

Despite the above examples being obviously inappropriate, in all four cases -- as he seems to have done with almost all such moves -- RHaworth left messages on their Talk pages, essentially telling them how to get around WP:NOT ("You are at liberty to move it back into the (Main) namespace but bear in mind that if you do so, it is likely to be nominated for deletion. As a user page it is likely to survive untouched").

[edit] Actual contributions?

But what about the contributions of the so-called editors? All right, over the last six to eight months, the results are:

Edit counts:
For each of the 102 editors surveyed (excluding deleted edits):

The wildly high STD is because of one editor -- Beckjord (talk · contribs) -- who had 661 edits (and, incidentally, is blocked until April 2007). Removing this outlier:

'Edit counts excluding Beckjord (talk · contribs)
For each of the 101 editors surveyed (excluding deleted edits):
  • Average: 9.48
  • STD: 19.65
  • Median: 4.00

[edit] More eye-glazing statistics

  • More than 45% of the 102 editors surveyed (46) have three or fewer total edits. Nearly three-quarters of them (74) have six or fewer edits. That's ALL Wikipedia edits, including their own User Pages.
  • Over half (54) have NO Mainspace edits whatsoever. Eight out of nine -- 88 of them, 86.3% -- have 6 or fewer Mainspace edits.

Needless to say, very few have made any edits past the initial attempts -- even, it appears, among the minority (20) with double-digit edit counts..

(For the data, see User:Calton/Userfied pages)

[edit] Poor judgment

As far as I'm concerned, this sampling of the more-than-400 userfications RHaworth has done since December raises serious questions, at the least, about his judgment.

[edit] RHaworth's response & reverting userfications

I intend to go back and revert inappropriate userfication moves where I can and slap on the appropriate speedy deletions/PROD/AFD tags, and where I can't revert moves, to blank the inappropriate user pages. I consider these pages an abuse of Wikipedia resources for the purpose of other people's self-promotion. WP:NOT, as far as I'm concerned, trumps unwritten practice.

But, given that general practice on Wikipedia provides a very wide latitude to User Page content and discourages editors from messing around with other editors's User Pages (except when it comes to fair-use images, for some reason), I thought I would first give notice here about my intentions, so no one pushes the panic button. I already have reverted/speedy-tagged the first several, which prompted User:TruthbringerToronto panicked run to RHaworth's talk page to try to save them.

RHaworth's response, in my opinion, shows very poor judgment and lack of understanding behind not just policies and guidelines, but their reasons

…I use userfication as an alternative to deletion because: a) it is more "humane" and b) it does not provide work for other editors in deleting the articles. Most of the people whose articles I have userfied have gone away and won't be coming back. But there are a few who don't distinguish between (Main) and User: namespaces and proudly show their friends their "Wikipedia article". In these cases, userfication has prevented the authors trying to recreate the article in the (Main) namespace. [1]

So deletion is more work than userfying (who knew?), sensitivity trumps policy, and, apparently, RHaworth is unacquainted with the {{deletedpage}} tag.

[edit] Actions needed

But more importantly than one admin's actions, there ought to be some general action and discussion concerning:

  • Some firmer policy on inappropriate User Pages
  • Enforcement of said new User Page policy and/or more consistent enforcement of existing policy & guidelines
  • Discouraging -- or at least not encouraging -- creation of inappropriate User Pages
  • Discouraging -- or at least not encouraging -- userfication of obvious vanity articles or speedies

In the very least, those who do so should take the slightest responsibility for their actions by tracking and deleting pages for those who show no evidence of being -- obviously never were and never intended to be -- actual Wikipedia editors. As the User Page Guidelines say:

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. But at the same time, if user page activity becomes disruptive to the community or gets in the way of the task of building an encyclopedia, it must be modified to prevent disruption [Emphasis mine].

As Wikipedia becomes more and more mainstream, more and more people are going to see it as simply a new -- and FREE!-- publicity/social networking resource to be exploited unless these things are actively discouraged.