Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Quotations should not contain wikilinks

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 Keep. The majority of the comments place a higher value on continuing discussion than on the need to eliminate all policy contributions of a now-banned user. Xoloz 15:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Quotations should not contain wikilinks

Proposal created by a sockpuppet of arbcom banned User:Zen-master. Gamaliel 19:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• Speedy delete under G5, surely? In any case, the place to suggest this was surely the talk page of MoS:L. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 21:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Speedy Delete per Hugh, Gamaliel. —phh (^t/_c) 23:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy keep - in case you hadn't noticed, there is a discussion going on on the talk page! See Wikipedia_talk:Quotations_should_not_contain_wikilinks. The story behind this is that I was directed to the proposed policy (Wikipedia:Quotations should not contain wikilinks) after I asked a question at the Help Desk here at 11:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC). After reading the proposed guideline I added a comment and left a message on the talk pages of people who had been discussing the proposal. One of these was Gamaliel. I left the message on Gamaliel's talk page here at 19:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC). It seems that four minutes later, at 19:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC), he nominated the proposal for deletion, rather than participate in the discussion that I had restarted. Is this normal procedure? I have seen speedy deletions before of content added by banned users and sockpuppets, and in some cases there was nothing wrong with the material. I would like to protest in the strongest possible terms against both Gamaliel's nomination to delete a proposal when a message had been sent about a discussion taking place there, and also the general attitude of deleting material based on who added it, not on the objective quality of the material itself. Carcharoth 00:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Fruit of the poisonous tree. It's important that banned users not be allowed to use sock puppets to contribute to the altering of Wikipedia policy. If you like the idea, and you are not a sock puppet yourself (and I do assume that you aren't), then you're certainly free to make a substantially similar proposal yourself after this one is deleted (although it really should be proposed at MoS:L, as Hugh notes). —phh (^t/_c) 01:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the link, the explanation and the suggestions. I hope you don't mind if I bring up a few more questions and comments:
      • 1) Should I ignore the way an invitation I issued to a discussion resulted in a nomination for that discussion (or at least the proposal) to be deleted? I am still rather shocked by that. At least a note on my talk page explaining things would have been nice.
      • 2) Should I thank you for assuming that I'm not a sock puppet? I thought that "assuming people are not sock puppets" is the standard attitude on Wikipedia, and didn't need to be stated like this. Or does "assume good faith" get over-ridden when possible sock puppets are involved? It would help to know in case I ever come up against a sock puppet (how do you recognise them anyway?).
      • 3) What is the best way to keep a copy of the proposal and the talk page discussions until I find time to write it up as my own proposal? Can I just copy or move the pages to my user pages? How long do I have before they are deleted? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. Carcharoth 02:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
        • Whether you thank me or not is entirely up to you. It merely occurred to me that my remark could be construed as accusing you of being a sock puppet, and I wanted to clarify that that was not my intent. For information about recognizing sock puppets, see Wikipedia:Sock puppetry and Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser. —phh (^t/_c) 16:02, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
• Absolutely and beyond a shadow of a doubt, we must keep this proposal. It is a good faith proposal that is still in discussion. It may eventually be tagged with {{rejected}} but even that is not obvious from the very reasoned and coherent discussion on the proposal's Talk page. It is clearly tagged as a proposal, not yet a guideline (and certainly not yet a policy). Deleting this copy and recreating it by another person would violate the attribution requirements of GFDL. Legal compliance with GFDL is more important to the project than being petty about the contributions of a user who is apparently only temporarily banned. Rossami (talk) 02:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, reasonable proposal. Deleting it only to recreate it, as suggested above, would be pretty idiotic. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:01, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The creator is not banned; he is blocked for one year. Regardless of his status, the proposal is being discussed on the talk page. It might be merged with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), but it doesn't need to be deleted. --TantalumTelluride 05:10, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep or Merge. The proposal was linked to from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (links)#FYI: Quotations should not contain wikilinks proposal when it was originally created a month ago, which is how I found it; I don't know why it's taken so long to be proposed for deletion. Is the standard procedure for new proposals to allow discussion to proceed on an existing Talk page for some time before adding a new Wikipedia: Proposal page? Even if that is the case, I think there must surely be enough history now for the proposal to merit its own page. Even if it's been sneaked in by a banned user, I think the genie is out of the bottle. That said:

• I was a little annoyed by Carcharoth leaving a message on my Talk: page to say they'd updated the page; I do have a watchlist after all.
• I also think the proposal is terrible.
• If all those supporting it are sockpuppets, delete it; otherwise it deserves bona fide discussion. And hopefully rejection, which will forestall future attempts to submit a similar proposal. I really don't want to have to rehash all the arguments. jnestorius^(talk) 08:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• You say: "I don't know why it's taken so long to be proposed for deletion." - would I be right to say that the admin who banned the sock puppet of the blocked user should have tidied up after the sock puppet and proposed this for deletion? Also, am I right to say that sock puppet contributions are proposed for speedy deletion, but that proposals are not deleted, merely rejected? Carcharoth 09:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Proposal - Firstly, I want to apologise for stirring up this issue. While looking at who contributed on the talk page of the proposal, I did notice that User:Hollow are the Ori was a sock puppet of a blocked user, but failed to remember that that sock puppet actually created the proposal. Now that I am more aware of G5, I will in future draw this kind of thing to someone's attention or propose it for deletion myself, and then resubmit the proposal myself (while acknowledging the earlier proposal). Unfortunately, with the amount of discussion that has now taken place, it seems that deletion might not be appropriate. I am also being persuaded on the talk page that some wikilinking is appropriate, so I propose the following:
  • Discussion is allowed to continue to reach a consensus (for example, I have just found an old discussion and linked to it from the talk page). I will argue for rejection as the proposal is too restrictive on wikilinks. If this is the consensus, the proposal can then be marked as {{rejected}}, as Rossami suggests, rather than deleted.
  • This will preserve the debate so that someone can, in future, write up a slightly different proposal urging people to take care when wikilinking from quotes. This could, and probably should, be done at MoS:L, as several people have suggested.
• Does this all sound reasonable? Carcharoth 09:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
• Clarification - a few points to clarify some things:

• 1) User:Zen-master was indeed banned. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Zen-master#Remedies number 3. This happened on 6 February 2006. The ban was enforced later that day with a block. So those saying that Zen-master is only blocked, rather than banned, are wrong. He is blocked as part of the enforcement of a year-long ban.
• 2) User:Hollow are the Ori created Wikipedia:Quotations should not contain wikilinks on 8 May 2006. User:Hollow are the Ori was indefinitely blocked on 18 May 2006 as a sock puppet of Zen-master.
• 3) Finally, those people saying that this proposal should be speedily deleted as the creation of a banned user might like to read the following, taken from Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Dealings_with_banned_users (deletion section): "If someone else has edited the page, particularly if they have made substantive edits, deletion is not appropriate. If you feel it is necessary, try instead to edit the page to remove or rework content contributed by the banned user, and keep content contributed by others." - in this case, there has not been substantial editing of the proposal by others, but there has been substantial debate on the talk page, which could legitimately be seen as a prelude to potential substantial editing of the proposal page. Maybe editing of the talk page counts anyway, without the need for that argument, but I think it is absolutely clear that these arguments rebut those arguing speedy delete.

• Carcharoth 15:01, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: First off, this isn't about being "petty". Banned users, especially those banned by arbcom, should not be allowed to alter policy. This is a dangerous precedent. Second, I'm sorry if I offended Carcharoth, but I submitted it for deletion simply because Carcharoth's message reminded me of a page which I had forgotten about. I feel that a speedy delete could easily be justified, but that a deletion discussion was more appropriate and would be less offensive than simply nuking the page myself. I understand the argument against deleting a page that would just be recreated again, and there was legitimate, thoughtful discussion going on regarding the policy. But my sense of it was the discussion was pretty deadlocked and had halted until Carcharoth's post, so I don't see the point of restarting the proposal. Gamaliel 17:21, 7 June 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.