- User:Timeshift9 (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
Several users have questioned my close of this MfD, so I might as well bring it here for review. T. Canens (talk) 10:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and restore I think (as someone who voted to keep the page) that the status of this discussion at the time it was closed was 'no consensus' rather than a consensus to delete. What's acceptable on user pages is a grey area, and this was reflected by the comments in the discussion - the editors who commented (most of whom are long-established editors) made different interpretations of the relevant guidelines (notably WP:BLP and WP:USERPAGE). At the time of closing the comments were weighted towards deletion, but I don't think that this was by a sufficient margin to indicate that it was a consensus view, particularly as two editors had indicated that editing the user page to remove the political statements was an acceptable alternative to deletion. As noted on my talk page, I commend T. Canens for asking for a review of his closure here, and hope that I'm as courteous when other editors question my actions as an admin. Nick-D (talk) 10:34, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Seems to be related to the recent edit history of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Front matter and Wikipedia_talk:Miscellany_for_deletion#Admin_action_or_consensus.3F. As per my !vote at AfD, I agree that the close was the right decision, but it is true that the close was a close wp:rough consensus call, and I welcome this review. Another admin might have called it differently, and this impacts the amount of leeway that editors are given in userspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:37, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and restore my view at the AfD was to keep. In terms of this review I am persuaded by the comments of Nick-D that at best the AfD should have been closed as no consensus. I should add that I am here because the closing admin contacted me on my talkpage inviting me to participate in this DRV. He is to be commended for inviting review of his decision. Miss E. Lovetinkle (talk) 10:43, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Within discretion. If we accept that these are grey areas, which I do, then we also have to accept that closing these MfDs are grey areas for admins and allow discretion. --Mkativerata (talk) 11:14, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I think there's a consensus that, while the encyclopaedia must be strictly NPOV, a degree of soapboxing is permitted in userspace. There's no consensus about how much soapboxing constitutes "a degree", although custom and practice shows wide latitude is given to userboxes or essays in userspace. To me, the substantive question is about the alleged BLP violations: per policy, it's clear that BLP violations are not permitted in userspace. This leads me to wonder exactly how egregious these alleged BLP violations really were, and whether it would be reasonable for them to have been addressed via revision deletion; but I'm unwilling to ask for a BLP-violating page to be temp-restored so that I can see for myself.
So, while I can't come to a definite opinion on this, my view is that the discussion does not justify deletion on consensus grounds alone, but BLP concerns may or may not be sufficient to tip this over into "delete".—S Marshall T/C 12:13, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Much of it was given to links to stories in the news media which were unfavourable to the Liberal Party (Australia's conservative party), and his comments on them. While one was left in no doubt as to his personally held political opinions, and might take offence if one was a particularly strong Liberal supporter, and the selection of articles was manifestly one-sided, I think calling it "BLP violating" would be a real stretch. Ironically, it was better sourced than some of our articles. Orderinchaos 17:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- The content of this user page remains in the Yahoo! cache. An example of a BLP violation in the cache:
lol @ [name redacted], opposition immigration spokesman, showing true Liberal Party colours with his exploit muslims for electoral effect comments. You sir, just show and confirm that your party's plans and policies for the future are anti-intellectual non-merit 1950s claptrap.
Cunard (talk) 21:53, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- The user quitting the project was always a major risk. Deleting someone's actual userpage is a very personal thing and the chances that they will subsequently leave the project seem very high to me. I'm certain that if mine got deleted, I'd pause only to raise my middle finger at the Wikipedia community before scuppering my account.—S Marshall T/C 13:48, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn The closer misread the consensus that had (or, in my view, had not) developed at the MfD. Broadly speaking I share Surturz's and Nick-D's views. The user had removed the alleged BLP violations before, or around the time that, the MfD started, so that wasn't the issue here. Orderinchaos 15:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I think that one can reasonably read a consensus to delete out of that MfD. That said, if the BLP problems listed in the MfD were the worst of them I'd likely have !voted to keep.In any case, the right way forward was for Thimeshift9 to clean up their page, which they _sounded_ willing to do. So basically while closer made a reasonable close given the discussion, I can't agree with the outcome based on what I can see. Hobit (talk) 16:33, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. The people advising deletion are correct that WP:SOAP, however ill-considered I think it is, would seem to affect some parts of that user page. (WP:BLOG seems like more of a stretch to me - it was not a personal narrative but a description of some news stories as I recall.) But is deletion a viable solution to this policy issue? After all, the page exists right now, and anyone can edit it. If Timeshift9 --- or someone else --- puts back some of the material that was on it before, will there be another AfD? Notice that AfD here is being used in the opposite way of how it is supposed to work. In a normal AfD, you (should) delete an article because it consists entirely of dreck, and contains nothing of value. But in this or any future AfD on this user page, you'd delete the page because it contains something you don't like. I don't think that's something we should be doing.
- The fact is, any of the people proposing or voting for deletion was free to scratch out the stuff they think violated policy with a simple edit. They could discuss their position on the talk page (Timeshift9's), go to dispute resolution, make an RfC or whatever, like people do for any other content dispute. Eventually they might impose their consensus on the page. But no part of that requires deletion, and nothing about this deletion prevents future disputes. So why are we here with a deletion? Are you afraid he might mention the history version to someone? Does that mean that even if he had changed the page back, or if someone added the old version and then he reverted it, you'd delete the page again, or insist on RevDeling the history just to make sure that there is no way to see an unauthorized political opinion? Because that's the message you seem to send by making a deletion rather than simply editing the page like anyone else.
- Now I see that they have WP:DELETE referencing WP:USER which asserts that WP:CENSOR applies only to "mainspace articles and images" while WP:SOAP applies to every page on Wikipedia. Cute. You have to almost admire how, no matter how clearly a project or nation is founded with a policy against censorship, those looking to prohibit things always manage to finagle a way to make their chosen vehicle more important than everything else in the cosmos. Even though WP:BURO would claim that we don't enforce policies just to make a point, when there is no possible benefit to be had from the attempt. The problem we have here is that there are simply bad policies joining together, pushing aside their less bullyish rivals and by themselves disrupting Wikipedia. Wnt (talk) 19:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion. Although some political commentary may be appropriate on a userpage this was excessive. The user can request that the former contents of the page be e-mailed to him if he wishes to use it elsewhere. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:15, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and keep. the consensus was not so much to delete as to reduce the antiliberal blog. This cannot be called a BLP issue, everything is clearly referenced. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. Pretty innocuous userpage, was a poor call that even got it this far. Rebecca (talk) 01:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion - my preference is that bloggy material is published on blogs. Also if an editor is thin skinned about their userpage, perhaps less drama is warranted and rewarded by self exile? Shot info (talk) 02:15, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion. Reasonable reading of the consensus, and per Newyorkbrad. There was a majority for deletion, and many of the "keep" votes were either vague or gave irrelevant rationales while the "delete" votes were grounded in the userpage policy. "I am becoming increasingly concerned that BLP has become a euphemism for political censorship" and "Too many important contributers have been driven out of Wikipedia by debates like this already" don't address the issue that the content on the userpage was blog material. It is perfectly acceptable to declare political preferences, but extended political and news commentary should be done on an external site; it is then acceptable to link to that site from the userpage. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:43, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion Most keep comments were not based on WP:UP and some had defects: (1) includes "should be strongly encouraged to move the commentary to an off-WP blog site" (that's in a keep); (2) is based on "NPOV is for articles, bias is better declared"; (3) has the author undertake to address any BLP vios that are brought up; (4) relies on "considerable latitude with what they do with their user page, and while I wouldn't highlight Timeshift's user page as being good practice, it's not particularly bad either"; (5) suggests issue is a content dispute and expresses a concern "that BLP has become a euphemism for political censorship"; (6) asserts that "many important contributers have been driven out of Wikipedia by debates like this already" and, when asked, proposed as an example a user who was not driven away by a user page deletion; (7) expresses a reasonable opinion, but one not based on WP:UP. The delete comments were largely based on WP:UP and pointed out that the user page violated WP:NOTBLOG and WP:SOAP. Johnuniq (talk) 08:31, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse - Weak keep calls were weighted less, leaving a consensus to delete. No problems here. Tarc (talk) 13:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. It is a matter for the closing admin to balance policy with consensus. There is no indication that did not occur. WWGB (talk) 13:16, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn the intent may not be to drive away productive editors, but that is the result. this editor made a good faith effort to cleanup his talk page, but because he was not obsequious enough, it's "delete is all"; it's not as if the only thing he did was edit in user space. this my way or the highway attitude is profoundly distructive to the wiki. i've heard this before: 'if they can't take a joke, or are too thin skinned, good riddance'. look around you, the drama will not decrease, because
the drama queens are all here. how many among you have created as many articles as this user? how many prefer to enforce rules? how do you expect to improve the wiki without editing in article space? when will you realize the steering wheel isn't connected to the tires? this is a volunteer organization, and we need to accomodate productive editors. we need a profound change in attitude, and until that change instituted by leadership, the drama will continue.Slowking4 (talk) 14:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Timeshift9 created 285 articles, excluding redirects, during his editing tenure. They were mostly related to Australian politics. I rather object to the phrase, "the drama queens are all here"—we try to keep DRV as a drama-free zone—but it's true, and rather ironic, that many of those calling for the deletion of Timeshift9's userpage are hardly productive content contributors. Our system values productive people and unproductive people equally, and there are administrators with less than a dozen page creations to their credit. They would no doubt say that they contribute to the Wiki in ways that don't involve content.—S Marshall T/C 15:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- you are right, i take it back, i over reacted to the comment: "perhaps less drama is warranted and rewarded by self exile?" which i would say refutes itself: more drama is created, since less drama is warranted. let's create some more drama here in order to stomp on a recalcitrant editor. and i agree article creation is not the end all criteria. i would say to you the things you reward, you shall have: if you reward productive content in article space you will get it; if you reward voting in talk space you will get it; if you reward drama seeking admins you will get it. Slowking4 (talk) 16:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse but urge him/her to remain in the project - the irony is that if I were an Australian and the userpage was a blog, I'd probably be watching it, as I often agreed with Timeshift's opinions; but that doesn't excuse the clearcut violation of WP:NOTBLOG. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:15, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion as the only reasonable assessment of the consensus in the debate. Had the page contained merely content that violated WP:SOAP, then redacting the violations may have sufficed. However, because the user page and its revision history contained what MfD nominator GorillaWarfare (talk · contribs) termed "egregious BLP issues", retaining it would be untenable.
On the whole, both the number and strength of the arguments rested with the "delete" side. As Sjakkalle (talk · contribs), Tarc (talk · contribs), and Johnuniq (talk · contribs) note above, several of the "keep" opinions failed to address the arguments for deletions and were therefore accorded less weight. The "delete" side persuasively argued that the violations of WP:UP, WP:SOAP, WP:NOTBLOG, and WP:BLP meant that the page's content was unacceptable. Cunard (talk) 21:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I disagree, the keep opinions (including mine) directly addressed the arguments for deletion. They only did so in a manner that the delete voters didn't like and conveniently dismissed with policies which don't quite apply. WP:BLP & WP:SOAP apply to articles, WP:NOTBLOG allows for opinion so long as it relates to article content and WP:UP works based on individual analysis and consensus, not absolutes. Therefore, it was the stated opinion of the keep votes that the userpage did not go far enough as to violate policy (aside from BLP issues, which were dealt with). This is a common pattern on Wikipedia where editors dismiss any opinion not littered with [[WP:]] links and refuse to address the actual logical basis for rendered opinions.
- All of that said, I endorse the deletion as per Mkativerata: the delete closure was well within the closing admin's discretion. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 15:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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- As mentioned earlier, the BLP issues were dealt with before the conclusion of that discussion. As for WP:SOAP, it applies primarily to articles and is designed to keep advocacy and opinions out of article content. While it suggests that the policy be broadened to encompass every other userspace on the wiki, that's not at all realistic and does not reflect the truth of what happens. Opinions, advocacy, etc. almost inevitably appear in any and all forums -- they are necessary for these forums to function. You could use an all-encompassing view to arbitrarily censor anything said behind the scenes at the wiki, so the policy is not only unrealistic but potentially harmful. Note for instance, that I'm on a soapbox right now. Does that mean that this discussion should also be deleted according to WP:WTFOMGBBBQ? ˉˉanetode╦╩ 23:55, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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