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image - the average reader will likely never see or hear about these pages, and a know a lot of editors either understand the occasional sillyness they provide, overlook it entirely, or delete them. Rules followed too strictly are just as bad as rules not followed at all sometimes. Speaking again from my own experience, there are a few
Knowledge (XXG)-IRC channels I fequent that serve specific purpose, however there is the occasional goofing off there which helps to release stress and build rapport between editors. When people take it too far, the channel ops step in, but otherwise a little play seems harmless. Anything taken to excess is bad, but that's where my opinion lays: If an editor spends 85% of their time editing and building Knowledge (XXG), and 15% of the time playing games, the overall is a net gain to the project, provided the games do not disrupt normal operations, which (it seems to me) secret pages do not.
863:. Now that we have built the largest reference work of all time, the easy part is over. To maintain it, we must maintain a stable, functional community, one that's entirely online, and made of the sort of people whose idea of fun is picking nits off an encyclopedia. If this doesn't scare you, it should. Knowledge (XXG) had a sort of beginner's bonus in its frontier days, but the cooperative spirit fostered by tangible progress and the shared excitement at this mad endeavor must inevitably diminish as the nature of editing changes and there are ever more things to disagree on.
421:, I am not sure how secret pages fit. They are no more "Personal web pages" then some of other more relevant content in userspace. They are not used for "File storage areas". I certainly have not seen them used as "Dating services" or "Memorials". Can you help to clarify this here? I do not see the link myself, but would like to see how our understandings differ. You seem more concerned with editor behavior in regards to finding/making secret pages more than the pages themselves, which is not a bad thing. If you want to propose a policy change to add secret pages to
608:-- these are harmless. Quoting policies against them is to interpret the policies in an improperly legalistic way. The point of policies is to advance the project and prevent harm to it, I think making a fuss against things like this is more harmful than the things themselves, in particular harmful to community spirit. If people are seriously contributing, then occasional diversions in user space are harmless, and even positive; but deleting them just makes the place more legalistic and unwelcoming. --
417:, specifically "part of your efforts to contribute to the project", again, I defer to building rapport with other editors. If I spend 5 minutes and find a secret page, post a note for that user, and strike up a conversation that leads toward collaboration on a project, then I see no harm. This may not happen often, but I sure sometimes it does. Looking at
582:
seeing how they fit its exceptional nature. And if this is more about our dignity... well. If being beneath our dignity is grounds for deletion on a website with this many editors and this many different opinions on what our dignity is and where it lies, we should save everyone some time by blowing up the encyclopedia and going home. --
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be hard to eliminate, and in time it may spread to take over policy and content pages (yes, that's a bit hyperbolic, but I think the trend is a problem). A particular person having secret pages may be no problem at all, and the person may be a great editor. The problem is the cumulative effect of the MYSPACE culture on others.
538:. Consider: If a user is contributing well to articles, why do you care how good or bad their userspace pages look? As long as that user makes good contributions to the article space, and their interactions with other users are polite, why do you care what else they do on Knowledge (XXG), or why they're here?"
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that there is no policy or precedent, and there are reasonable arguments for both sides. I find the pages valuable as one of the few ways editors can connect exclusively positively, and where they can be reminded that one does not always have to worry about rules and conflicts while editing
Knowledge
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My claim is that the spread of secret pages and similar actions (like indiscriminate wikilove and barnstar templating) gives new users the mistaken impression that they own their userspace and can use it to express themselves in any way they like ("MYSPACE"). Once such a subculture flourishes it will
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Though you have never spent more than 5 minutes looking for secret pages, the combined time wasted on creating secret pages and false secret pages and finding them is time that could be spent doing collaborative work on an article. Secret pages are harmful because they detract from the time spent on
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This is subjective to the person looking for the pages, not the pages themselves. I have looked for secret pages and never spent more than 5 minutes looking for one. Also, this has helped people like myself learn how to navigate around
Knowledge (XXG). I fail to see how this hurts Knowledge (XXG)'s
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Though I have no interest in secret pages myself, I'm unconvinced that they count as social networking, games or any other thing forbidden by The Rules. The longstanding consensus to delete secret pages is neither longstanding nor a consensus. The previous times large amounts of noise were made on
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By the same token, there are times when I have been working on articles and followed a link to a different article and spent a half hour just reading it before returning to the article that I was actually working on. If a page that distracts a user from contributing and building
Knowledge (XXG), I
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It's one thing to have a chess game or other amusement as a small part of one's talk page, but making more secret pages is contrary to building the encyclopedia. The first ten people who made a secret page (years ago) were experimenting, but those doing it now are inadvertently promoting the idea
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Has any encyclopedia before us ever had the ability to have such things? I suspect not. How, then, can our predecessors teach us about a practice that they have never tried? Certainly not well enough to be grounds for stopping one. The entire wiki was built on trying out radical new concepts, and
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While secret pages may have helped you learn to navigate around
Knowledge (XXG), there are more constructive methods of learning to do that. Browsing through the articles, clicking from one blue link to another, allows editors to experience and appreciate the work that has already been done on
409:, so it may be gone when you read this.) The basis for my thoughts are this: Having known many volunteer firefighters, there are often times that they are pulled over for speeding when responding to a call. They are never ticketed. There is not a law that allows this in some states, however
108:. A little play is good to relax every now and then. If the user is doing nothing but playing games, I would support deletion, but this user seems to have a decent amount of good edits, (1645). They seem to be retired,(last edit June 2009) so the point may be moot. Also, keep in mind
302:, thereby hurting Knowledge (XXG)'s image. Common sense tells us that barnstars awarded for finding secret pages hurts the reputation of barnstars; barnstars should be given for content and productive betterment of the encyclopedia, not social networking.
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and tag ALL of them for deletion? (Go ahead, I'll wait.) Come to think of it, by the same token, practically everything done in userspace is a waste of time. Taking 5 minutes to give someone a barnstar is out. Let's delete everything in
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Okay, now I think I understand what you mean. What I meant was that if you restrict the freedom of users in this direction, they won't feel at all welcome here. I certainly wouldn't. Your reply was a little ambiguous though.
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If you find this effect insignificant, there is another: it is very much significant that we do not become a community where even such small deviations from The
Complex And Proper Order Of Things are set upon and crushed.
209:. Even if a contribution "violates" the precise wording of a rule, it might still be a good contribution. Similarly, just because something is not forbidden in a written document, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. The
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says, "The focus of user pages should not be social networking, but rather providing a foundation for effective collaboration." Games, such as secret pages, fall under activities that social-networkers do.
140:, a policy on Knowledge (XXG), applies to all users, whether they are seasoned or are new. Editors with a "decent amount of good edits" are not given the license to violate policy. I strongly agree with
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Knowledge (XXG). This also allows editors to catch flaws in the articles they visit or notice a short article that interests them, thereby leading them to correct the errors and expand the articles.
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I'm afraid that I don't hold double standards when it comes to inappropriate use of the userspace. Experienced editors and novice ones should be held accountable to the same standards.
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at all. They act almost as encyclopedia-based games for users. And if you think you're going to see anyone start deleting WikiLove templates, you've got another thing coming.
534:(Again, not policy, but also seems a good guideline to me): "Some editors may focus on removing non-encyclopedic userspace pages, rather than on building articles. Don't be a
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states: "Your user page is about you as a
Wikipedian, and pages in your user space should be used as part of your efforts to contribute to the project."
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If I am correct in that there is more concern over the time wasted on secret pages than on the pages themselves, I would also propose creating
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would be happy to start PRODing interesting and informative articles if I don't actually contribute to them. (Not really, because I believe in
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399:. It took me less than a minute. Really not time wasted in the grand scale of Knowledge (XXG). (I asked for the page to be deleted under
758:"those doing it now are inadvertently promoting the idea that Knowledge (XXG) user pages (and then articles?) be converted to MYSPACE."
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secret pages were a MfD on them as a whole, which gave no consensus, and an arbitration case on their improper mass deletion attempt,
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per SJK. And if you don't allow people some harmless free expression on their userpages, you're gonna see a lot of good users leave.
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I sincerely hope you can see why you need to rephrase that. You really should, because that was extremely rude the way you put it.
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Common sense tells us that this misuse of
Knowledge (XXG) as a hide-and-seek playground undermines Knowledge (XXG)'s purpose as an
78:. Secret pages do not contribute to building the encyclopedia. There has been a longstanding consensus to delete secret pages. See
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Users won't leave because useless secret pages are deleted. If they "leave" because of this reason, they are not worth retaining.
460:. Feel free to tweak links/layout if you chose to, or ignore it entirely. Just trying to propose some possible alternatives here.
504:
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indicates that people are spending too much time on searching for secret pages. Here is one example that is a common occurrence:
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as you go about editing. Being too wrapped up in rules can cause loss of perspective, so there are times when it is better to
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I should also note, if concern stems from time wasted doing fun things instead of working on the 'pedia, then everything in
687:...did you actually just say that? I hope you're going to take it back now, once you realize what you are implying, right?
512:, and was not deleted. (This took me like an hour when I did it - not "productive" use of my time.) The questions posed at
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286:– "Did you really think it was going to be this easy, oh come on, you can do better. It's out there somewhere"
280:– "Did you really think it was going to be this easy, oh come on, you can do better. It's out there somewhere"
274:– "Did you really think it was going to be this easy, oh come on, you can do better. It's out there somewhere"
268:– "Did you really think it was going to be this easy, oh come on, you can do better. It's out there somewhere"
262:– "Did you really think it was going to be this easy, oh come on, you can do better. It's out there somewhere"
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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a
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Some may see it as a double-standard; I don't personally. Again, I look at net gain for the project. As for
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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a
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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below.
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818:. I'll bet you that J.delanoy spends more time on that than anyone does on a secret page.
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625:- user has good edits, but is inactive and apparently nobody's found it yet (except nom).
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does not belong in this encyclopedia, and I would have voted delete in that MfD.
395:, but you get the idea I am driving at.) Also, I created my own secret page, at
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that
Knowledge (XXG) user pages (and then articles?) be converted to MYSPACE.
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Look it's a secret page, it does not harm, it is not an encyclopedia article
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898:- For those who consider these wasted time: Who wants to go through
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Knowledge (XXG):Do not disrupt Knowledge (XXG) to illustrate a point
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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate.
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Knowledge (XXG):Miscellany for deletion/User:Tezero/Secret Page
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sometimes smaller rules/laws are broken for the greater good.
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Will deleting the page actually do Knowledge (XXG) any good?
563:: "Secret" pages are inappropriate for an encyclopedia. --
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Knowledge (XXG):Miscellany for deletion/User:Vinsfan368/^^
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constructive collaboration that betters the encyclopedia.
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Even if we ignore the applicable violations of policy,
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516:(Not policy, but seems a good guideline to me):
39:). No further edits should be made to this page.
963:). No further edits should be made to this page.
213:of the rules is more important than the letter.
872:(XXG). You know that that's all too valuable.
830:applies in this circumstance. In my opinion,
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784:I'm not sure that the secret pages reflect
423:WP:UP#What may I not have on my user page?
415:WP:UP#What may I not have on my user page?
362:WP:UP#What may I not have on my user page?
165:All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
106:All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
756:What hey? Your !vote makes no sense. ...
223:It is. It's a friendlier restatement of
18:Knowledge (XXG):Miscellany for deletion
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44:The result of the discussion was
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225:Knowledge (XXG):Ignore All Rules
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367:Lastly, do you believe that
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371:allows secret page games?
59:18:51, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
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530:Plus the following, from
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339:22:35, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
312:20:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
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189:05:40, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
177:Knowledge (XXG) as a game
129:22:21, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
96:06:14, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
956:Please do not modify it.
260:User:Sushiflinger/Secret
32:Please do not modify it.
913:while we are at it. :)
456:with the contents of
425:, I will support it.
356:All editors are equal
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160:this one
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561:Delete
373:Cunard
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90:(
52:_
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