User talk:Daniel C. Boyer/move to user

Summary

Options :

The article could be moved to the user space

against because it would be stating it is not a real article Oliver P.
temporary move as compromise - revisit the issue later Martin, till we *), Camembert
permanent move to user space. Encyclopedic articles will internally link to it Nelson; Kat

Argument

An act of consideration toward an editor
A temporarily solution to keeping information, which might be integrated later on if the page is thought more relevant
No lack of space
Commonly practiced for newbies who confuse user space with main space

Arguments against

Wikipedia is not a web space provider
User pages should be wikipedia-building oriented first
User pages are not meant for self-promotion

The article could be moved to meta-Wikipedia

Argument :

Some of the arguments above listed
A redirect existed on méta for several months with no one complaining. (Really? Where?) here. The redirect was created on the 06th of august 2002.

Arguments against :

It is not meta-Wikipedia's role to receive these kind of pages, nor these redirects.

External or internal link

The link from an encyclopedic article to the user subpage, could be

treated as an external link (ie, listed at the end of the encyclopedic article). This would make obvious the subpage is not an encyclopedic article from Wikipedia and would limit the risk of Wikipedia being taxed of "poor professionalism" due to adding irrelevant or inimportant articles in the encyclopedic space
treated as an internal link

Keep a redirect or not

We'd need to decide whether to leave a redirect from Daniel C. Boyer to its location in the user: space.

Argument

Commonly practiced for newbies who confuse user space with main space

Arguments against

Show up in google (self-promotion argument)

Anthère

Old discussion

Maybe we could just have an informal convention that User:FoobarKala/bio is where one might put ones capsule bio, without cluttering the userpage proper. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 12:33, Jul 30, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think this is appropriate for the 'pedia. IMHO, the 'pedia shouldn't be a place to host a vanity site. If people really want to include their bio, they can do it on their user page. AFAIK, there's no limit to the size of the page. If people really want to do this, though, there is no stopping them I guess. :-) —Frecklefoot 14:26, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It might be best to get rid of these pages altogether. An alternative solution might be to create a separate namespace (or even a project of its own) for biographies, (auto- or other). Nobody expects to find independently-verified truth in an autobiography. If biographies presented themselves apart from the encyclopedia and it were made obvious what is autobiographical and what is not, the damage to Wikipedia's credibility could be mitigated. Kosebamse 16:08, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd vote against starting a new project for vanity biographies—auto- or other. Geez. If people are that self-absorbed, let them put up a vanity web site that they actually have to pay for (actually, many ISPs give subscribers one for free). As far as allowing vanity entries in the 'pedia, as I said before, I vote against them. I agree with everything that Kosebamse pointed out. —Frecklefoot 17:47, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps I should clarify that I absolutely don't want a vanity project - I am strongly opposed to everything that undermines Wikipedia's credibilty. I just think that if that disease can not be eradicated, it should at least be contained somewhere else so that it doesn't contaminate Wikipedia's article namespace. Kosebamse 18:05, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, I hope you'll be listing Wikipedia for deletion then... Martin 15:18, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Suggestion : moving the article to the user space

Hey folks, I just want to get your opinion on my comments at Wikipedia_talk:Auto-biography, where I ask why we don't put self-promotion on your userpage and link to it from serious articles if needed. --Nelson 18:27, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's a silly idea, IMO. When people click links they expect to be taken to an encyclopedia article, not someone's wikipedia homepage. If someone doesn't deserve an article, then they don't deserve links to their wikipedia homepage from articles. If they do deserve an article, then they should get a proper article.

Besides, Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising - and that includes homepages. Martin 19:48, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, what I meant is that would be a way people could "vote" for somebody to have a proper article, in a sort of Googly way. If there are a lot of links to the person's userpage from other articles, then maybe it's time they got something "real". Until then, perhaps Boyer and people who want articles on themselves ought to make their pages article-y, as a blueprint for what they might be like if they are made into official NPOV articles. Then, if the person doesn't like the NPOV article on them, they can speak about their objections on their userpage (which they could link to from the article), instead of getting into an edit war. --Nelson 19:56, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I also disagree with your suggestion that you can't advertise on your userpage? I guess depending on how obnoxious you are about it, it could be inappropriate, but if I want to put up a line about, say, how my webhosting company is the greatest in the world, I don't think that should be deleted or anything. It would just be tasteless to do the equivalent of a full page ad on it.--Nelson 20:15, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I guess what I'm arguing for is a division of Wikipedia into a strictly NPOV space, i.e. the regular encyclopedia, and the POV user space, where you can self-promote without fear. Remember, Wikipedia is not paper, there is infinite space. If you're not interested in material, you don't have to look at it. As long as you don't get POV material when you're expecting NPOV material, it's OK. If anybody actually finds Boyer's work important, like perhaps it has influenced some other artist, they can link to Boyer's user page from that artist's article, and as long as the link is clearly to a user page the reader knows what they are getting into. I think POV material may have a place in Wikipedia, and that place may be the user pages.--Nelson 20:18, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a provider of free webspace. It is not a hoster of personal essays. Your user page should be focused on building an encyclopedia. Tell us about yourself, so we have a greater understanding of your biases, your knowledge, and your experience. Add a picture, so we can connect better with you as a person. But always remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and we may delete anything that does not help us in achieving that aim.

I don't believe this article is particularly biased, so I do not believe it should be deleted for being "POV". If you would like to say specifically where you feel it is biased, please say. You may also wish to add a NPOV dispute header. Martin 22:35, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I guess the existence of the article seems POV, and I thought this might put an end to the controversy. --Nelson 03:44, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

User sub page integrated as an internal or external link

I question the need or desirablity of the following in the article:

Boyer also edits Wikipedia—see User:Daniel C. Boyer.

--Dante Alighieri 20:29 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

My opinion is that (a) being an editor for a large encyclopaedia is an important part of a person's life, even if it's not their official profession, and therefore merits inclusion in a biographical article, and that (b) internal links within Wikipedia articles should only be to other Wikipedia articles, not to odd pages like "User:" pages or "Wikipedia:" pages or whatever. This is what ordinary readers who are not familiar with our ways would expect. They might expect to get a nice NPOV article about something, and might get confused if confronted with someone's rants about politics or whatever. (Hypothetically speaking - I can't remember what is on Daniel C. Boyer's user page.) Perhaps a link to a "User:" page should be classified as an external link...? -- Oliver P. 01:14 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have explained in the article that User:Daniel C. Boyer is a Wikipedia user page. It shouldn't be included in the normal "see also" fashion, because that is for other Wikipedia articles, which that page is not. I'm still not entirely sure it shouldn't be classified as some sort of external link, though. It's not external to the Wikipedia website as a whole, but it is external to the main article space. -- Oliver P. 11:44 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've decided that user pages should be included as external links, because they are not in the main article space. Furthermore, we want our articles to be usable by other people, on other websites. All our special Wikipedia-oriented pages will be external links, for them. -- Oliver P. 07:38 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You do realize that by stating "Daniel C. Boyer's Wikipedia user page" you are fooling nobody; rather, you are making it plainly clear that the link is to a wikipedia user page - which, is certainly located at www.wikipedia.org Pizza Puzzle

I don't understand what you mean. My intention is not to fool anybody. If I am not fooling anybody, then I have been successful, yes? -- Oliver P. 00:50 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Moving with redirect or no redirect ?

Redirecting the page does at least seem to resolve the stalemate for now, and to attempt to be completely fair, it is probably a reasonable compromise given the current status of the votes (although I still think it should be deleted, of course) and also the fact that it has been done so many times in the past. Now that I've said this, I'm sure I'm just inviting someone to revert MB's change. (I'm not sure compromise is in many Wikipedians' vocabulary, here.) It does give us the option of addressing the other user redirects as a whole if we want to discuss and debate those outside of the context of Mr. Boyer — thank goodness. Daniel Quinlan 03:55, Aug 4, 2003 (UTC)

There were a few articles where it wasn't really clear. I just fixed them, check my contribution list to see what I mean. There's also lots of double-redirects (and those weird redirects with the boilerplate text). I've left them for now, so that it's not too hard to fix if someone wants to revert this article. They'll probably be deleted eventually anyway.

I agree that redirecting looks reasonable at this stage. Perhaps we barely have the numbers for a short stub if you add the two categories together, but it's pretty close.

As for all your other arguments, we've been through them all before, I don't think there's anything more to be said. As I've said before, the reason I created my stub was partly because of Daniel's self-promotion, but not at all because of his previous creation of Daniel C. Boyer, which was actually created before the user namespace existed, just like Maveric149. -- Tim Starling 06:59, Aug 4, 2003 (UTC)

Compromise : moving the article for a while and revisiting the discussion later

One option would be to have a redirect here for the time being, and review the issue again in, say, August 2004, and see what people's feelings are then. Maybe then both sides will be able to reassess their old views and come to a new, deeper, understanding of the problem. Martin 21:15, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't think a redirect to the user namespace is a good idea as a long-term solution - if he deserves an article, let's give him an article; if not, let's delete it - but perhaps calling a halt for a month (a year seems too long, at least for starters) and putting in a redirect on a temporary basis (meaning the article isn't here, but also isn't deleted outright) might not be a bad idea. That's just my opinion, of course. --Camembert

I'll go with that. Let's review in a month. Martin 10:56, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Argh! Could we make it a redirect to user space (say, something like: User:Daniel C. Boyer/temp-bio with the last revision of the page to be found there? -- till we *) 11:03, Aug 5, 2003 (UTC)

That would also work. Do you want to do the honours? Martin

I did it, but didn't thought about moving (can that be done across name-spaces?). So, now at User:Daniel C. Boyer/temp-bio (uncool name, I know) there is last content of the Daniel C. Boyer article and can be edited there. I put a note on top of the article that it is disputed and the redirect into user space should be reviewed in the beginning of september. Hope that's okay. -- till we *) 16:03, Aug 5, 2003 (UTC)

Why does this currently redirect into the user namespace? That seems most bizarre to me. We're discussing whether or not this is a valid encyclopaedia article, not whether or not it is a valid subpage of a user page. This seems to be the outcome of a strange dialogue involving Martin, Camembert, and Tillwe, in which I can detect no actual argument, and no connection to any policy that I know of. If the article is to be kept, it will be kept at Daniel C. Boyer. If it is to be deleted, it will be deleted from Daniel C. Boyer. And of course it is being discussed at Talk:Daniel C. Boyer. Therefore, the only logical place for the content is Daniel C. Boyer. I'm moving it back. -- Oliver P. 00:27, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, not so much a policy, but and0rod was perhaps a precedent. I dunno. Martin

I see the move into user space (and there not pointing to the main User:DCB page, but to an copy of the article in the version before the last edit war started -- sorry for that) as a temporary solution, because I think [a rewritten article] could find a majority. -- till we *) 22:37, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)

I have implemented the redirect to a User: subpage per your suggestion.

Thanks! It feels much better that way! -- till we *) 23:37, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)

Meanwhile...the article goes back and forth :-)

Would people please stop moving - no, worse, cutting and pasting - this article into the user namespace? It is very important to maintain a distinction between the article space and the user space, because different rules apply in the two places. Pages in the user space are not required to be encyclopaedia articles. They are not required to follow the policies of NPOV, verifiability, or pretty much any other policy for that matter. To move a page into the user space is to state that it is not a real article, and that anyone can do pretty much anything they want with it. But that is far from being the consensus. There are many who believe that this is a proper encyclopaedia article, and that it therefore belongs in the article space. No-one has provided any argument for the move, so I've moved it back. Again. And I will continue to do so unless someone can come up with a very good argument for violating such basic Wikipedia conventions. -- Oliver P. 17:47, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I should add that the case of the Ben Hajioff article (now at User:Oliver Pereira/and0rod) should not be thought of as in any way a precedent for what is going on here. Admittedly, I didn't follow Wikipedia policy to the letter in that case, but what I did there was nothing like as bad as what is happening here. For those unfamiliar with the case, I have summarised it at User talk:Oliver Pereira/and0rod. Please see that page for further details, but reply below if you wish to make any comments on its relevance to the current case. -- Oliver P. 19:56, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Who moved the temp-bio back to Daniel C. Boyer? There was no such consensus. --Wik 18:04, Sep 7, 2003 (UTC)

Oliver P. Look earlier on this talk page for his comments on the subject. Martin 23:20, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

New discussion

I see that the article has been moved yet again into the User: namespace, this time by User:Wik, on 7 Sep 2003. I'm not presently feeling bold enough to move it back, but I still see no reason why it should be here. I can't find any answer to my concerns in my 16 Aug 2003 messages above. Is there one that I just haven't found? I still don't understand why this is happening, and no-one is explaining it to me! Grrr. Clearly I'm missing something, but I don't see how moving an article helps in any way in deciding whether or not we should keep it. On the contrary, it gives a false impression that the issue has been resolved (i.e. that the page has been officially declared a non-article), which I don't believe is the case at all. So keeping the article in the User: space just confuses people. And as I pointed out above, it is very important to maintain a distinction between the article space and the user space, because different rules apply in the two places. So come on, if there is a counterargument to that, can someone please tell me...? -- Oliver P. 01:35, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

No, your concerns haven't been answered. My guess is that Wik simply didn't see your comment. Martin 09:36, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Well, moving it back also gives the impression that the issue has been resolved (i.e. that the page has been officially declared an article), which I don't believe is the case at all. My impression was that the majority opinion was rather against the article. In any case, the amount of discussion on this matter is reaching absurd levels. Can't we just hold a vote with a clear deadline and clear procedure and settle this once and for all? --Wik 10:02, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC)

We're getting off-topic here, but please wait for Anthere and I to finish refactoring the old discussion, if you would, before doing anything drastic like setting up a new vote or listing it on VfD again. Martin 10:18, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Please Oliver and Wik. Read my comment on Talk:Daniel C. Boyer. I consider that this issue has not been solved. I would like to propose another procedure, binding this time. But, before doing so, it make sense to try to sum up all what has been done and said, to make information easily available to everyone about the discussions already held, to identify perhaps ways that have not been enough explored or not explored at all. Perhaps some new arguments can be offered, and new ideas arise from the refactoring. Meanwhile, would you both avoid moving the article here and there ? Or listing it again on vfd ? It won't solve anything to do so. Oliver, the fact it was moved here does not close the case. But give Martin and I a little bit of time please. Anthère

Thanks for the replies. Anthère, I have read your comment, and it looks like a good summary of the present unfortunate situation. And I agree with you that moving the article here doesn't close the case. I was just saying that it gives the false impression of closing the case. (The usual practice is to leave articles where they are while discussions are taking place.) As for the inconclusiveness of the debate, the main problem seems to be that no-one even agrees on what criteria should be used to decide about inclusion of biographical articles. I suppose I should be arguing at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies, really, because everything on Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies looks very arbitrary to me at the moment. So perhaps I should go over there... By the way, I must say that I'm very impressed with the amount of work that you and Martin are doing in arranging all these discussions. Good luck with it! -- Oliver P. 02:28, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Oliver.

As I looked on the discussions, it appeared to me that several matters were mixed. The issue of who is the author for example should be separared from the issue of whether the article is or is not encyclopedic. Hence separating the different discussions, to keep what could really lead to a solution : the facts that could justify inclusion. You are right that the core issue is whether there should be criteria for inclusion or not. And if there are criteria for inclusion, which criteria should be used. When this is clear, decision over this article should just be "does it respect the criteria or not". You are most welcome to work on the criteria to help solve the issue. I go there next :-)

Other than that, it is just a question of whether, as a kindness for a contributor, we accept articles not respecting criteria ;-) Anthère

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