The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous 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 discussion was Keep. Closing early as a WP:SNOW situation. No matter what one thinks about political userboxes, it is clear that nominating this particular page won't result in their mass deletion. Nominator may wish to start a more open-ended discussion in another venue. --RL0919 (talk) 17:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User boxes are evil; *political* user boxes are especially evil: they're WP:SOAPBOX and WP:UP#POLEMIC vios and promote teh WP:BATTLEGROUND and are a significant contributor to the toxic environment known as en:wp.

My intent here is to delete this page, and every damn box currently used there.^oldid

• a thought experiment; imagine a project without these and their ilk; without the users who use them.

See also

WP:HERE

Damned, Gold Hat (talk) 00:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

note: this MfD occurred to me during Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 March 17#User:NYyankees51/heartbeat and the ANI thread that led to it. Damned, Gold Hat (talk) 02:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment so you support the deletion of "This user uses believes in the right of every human being to have access to Wikipedia" (sic) and "This user is a poll worker." and "This user is interested in politics." (2 versions!) and "This user is strictly apolitical."? Nil Einne (talk) 01:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd support the deletion of *all* user boxes, since you ask. We had a user box war about four years ago; teh wiki lost, and we've about a million of the things clotting up the project. The one along that lines of 'This user likes pizza' would seem harmless enough, but at their core, user boxes are shallow bling and they degrade the whole project by promoting a trivial mindset. User boxes derived from babel boxes, which really are about collaboration.
  At hand, are the political ones, and they're toxic. There would be other blocs that are, too. Damned, Gold Hat (talk) 02:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm aware of the history but it's not particularly relevent to my point. If I understand you correctly, you're saying describing yourself as interested in politics or as a poll worker or any of the other examples I gave is toxic? Nil Einne (talk) 17:16, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment If you support the deletion of all user boxes, why not go for it? The argument that "*political* user boxes are especially evil" is a difficult one. Wikipedia involves politics like everything else. --Kleinzach 03:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Political userboxes tend to be among the most divisive, and can be sources of conflict, soapboxing, etc. Most userboxes are simply trivial (speaking as someone who has quite a few userboxes on their page). Nikkimaria (talk) 03:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  When you say political userboxes are your referring to any and all userboxes in the page up for deletion but no others (as this deletion would suggest)? If so, can you explain why any of the examples given above by me are more toxic then say "This user dislikes American 'English' (common grammatical and spelling errors mistaken for dialect)" or "This user believes that cats are NOT food."? Nil Einne (talk) 17:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• there must be tens of thousands. mebbe we could set a precedent here for a change to WP:USER. Damned, Gold Hat (talk) 04:05, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. This whole thing seems a little pointy to me. "Imagine a project... without the 'users' who use them"-- a little overboard, no? --E♴(talk) 03:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  No; this place is *toxic* and I'm suggesting that it improve. I recently suggested banning a hundred admins and a thousand other users. root was right. Damned, Gold Hat (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Unless the userbox specifically attacks another group or person, we should keep these as they make individual users' POVs/COIs more apparent to others. To blame battleground mentality on userboxes is a bit extreme and consensus has generally been to keep the userbox "system" in place. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  The boxes are not the cause, they're a symptom and an accelerant. People need to understand that they're hurting the project by importing their partisanship. Damned, Gold Hat (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• This proposal is a Wikipedian sumptuary law, and those have rarely worked in practice. I think that allowing people a little latitude to express themselves in their own userspace is a useful outlet because then, perhaps, they might blow off less steam in discussion spaces, so I would personally recommend that political userboxes are kept.

  However, my formal position in terms of this MfD is neither "keep" nor "delete". I think that as the nominator admits, there's a pre-established consensus in favour of userboxes in general, and that consensus is old enough, and strong enough, that an MFD should not be allowed to trigger a mass deletion. I think that a full RFC would be necessary before it was appropriate to remove all political userboxes from userspace. So my position in MFD terms is wrong venue—send it to RFC.—S Marshall T/C 11:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I don't think a userbox that simply says "this user supports/opposes X" is illegitimate or polemical. Such userboxes do have an encyclopedic purpose in that it is good for editors to declare any potential biases and merely stating a position doesn't necessarily mean you are trying to convert other people to it. Even if you don't agree with this some of the userboxes on the page such as "this user is strictly apolitical" or "this user is interested in politics" can't possibly be interpreted as polemical, and if these userboxes are to be deleted they should be considered on a case-by-case basis. I agree with S Marshall above that the best way to handle any change to political userboxes would be a policy change or RFC rather than a deletion discussion. Hut 8.5 13:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all. Quoting from myself in an MFD elsewhere on this page: "I personally think userboxes like this one, which do nothing except express a political opinion should be banned. They do nothing to help improve the encyclopaedia, and are only likely to provoke arguments; I've never understood why they're apparently exempt from WP:SOAP." It's long past time we stopped allowing people to use their user pages for partisan advocacy in this manner; all such userboxes do is provoke disputes and encourage editors to identify themselves with real-world political factions. It's true that they're a symptom, rather than the main cause, of such factionalism; but I think declaring them outlawed would send a valuable message, and just possibly help to improve the atmosphere around here. Robofish (talk) 15:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Cart before horse. The page is an index of various political templates that can be used on a user page. Some of the userboxes are 100% covered by current policy (This user is interested in Lenin). Most are benign in asserting their preferences, others are not so benign in their assertions. Nominate the ones you think need to go, or put up a CENT listed RFC about this topic. Hasteur (talk) 15:58, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for all the keep reasons above. It is also not appropriate to try to delete a long list of userboxes when they have in fact not been listed or separately tagged. We are now past the war on userboxes of several years ago (was it really 4 years ago?!). We can deal with any really objectionable userboxes on an individual basis. Most of them here are fine. --Bduke (Discussion) 00:57, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. There is no way that this will not turn out to be a WP:TRAINWRECK. Nominate specific ones, please - I agree that there are some that need to go, but this won't work. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:08, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Userboxes don't make the project partisan. Partisans make the project partisan.-RHM22 (talk) 23:33, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep My opinion may be more trivial than most, but my concern is not regarding userboxes themselves. My concern is more about their usage. People that place a few dozen on their userpages (see Hawkrawkr's page, which coincidentally includes a "undelete" template) are not using them appropriately, but a few spotted about is not a problem. This page is merely a guideline on how to use specific userboxes made for use by others. Individual userboxes may require removal, but surely not the entire page. Further, "They do nothing to help improve the encyclopaedia" - correct. They are meant for user space. Not the encyclopedia. Leave them in user space. CycloneGU (talk) 15:26, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep since this is nothing but a pointy nomination. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:11, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• strong keep it is good practice to disclose your biases, these help to do that. No human being can ever be unbiased, and it serves a purpose to the encyclopedia to allow people a way to make a fair disclosure of their opinions. HominidMachinae (talk) 07:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.