Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template:User BNP

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 * 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:  move to User:Alan McBrazil Burger/Userboxes/BNP. A raw vote count has this as 2 editors for deletion, 3 editors for keep (one keep-arguing editor did not make an actual bolded vote), and 3 for moving to userspace. As the pro-move edits were all at the end of the discussion and are something of a medium point between keep and delete, I'm opting to conclude this discussion with that action rather than closing as no consensus. signed,Rosguill talk 21:46, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Template:User BNP

 * – (View MfD)

WP:POLEMIC. Adam9007 (talk) 03:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Does not violate WP:POLEMIC.
 * Is the intention to forbid userboxes declaring support for disreputable parties? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:49, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Such userboxes are already practically forbidden, per WP:NONAZIS (which, although an essay, has widespread support). If User:Mender/Userboxes/BritishNationalism is a white supremacist userbox, then this certainly is. I dare anyone who has had such a userbox on their userpage and had has had sanctions (formal or informal) enacted against them for it to tell me that such userboxes aren't polemical (I should know, because it's happened to me, though not with this particular userbox). Adam9007 (talk) 16:04, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Adam, I have been watching MfD for a long time, and selective deletion of userboxes is not routine. You may have an argument, but your nomination statement is inadequate.  If it violates POLEMIC, say how.  What I see is a userbox pointing to a legal political party.  The British National Party contains many instances of the text "nazi", but it does not say in simple terms that this is a nazi party.  I am inclined to disagree with your nomination, largely because Userbox MfDs is not the right forum to decide the boundary lines for Wikipedian's acceptable political affiliations.  I am more inclined to support the user's self-declaration of sharing this party's POV, meaning that as long as the user displays this userbox, they must consider themselves to have a COI on all related articles.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:56, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep - To expand the question of User:SmokeyJoe, either we should forbid all partisan userboxes, or we should forbid userboxes for politically incorrect parties. Which is it?  If a good argument can be advanced as to which is being argued and why, I may change this to a Weak Keep or a Neutral.  (Looking across the Atlantic, I personally think that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are also behaving disreputably, but that Britons have a right to support disreputable political parties.)  Robert McClenon (talk) 06:28, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:43, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - No evidence of being polemical, violent or genocidal or anything. —DIYeditor (talk) 02:43, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Those above are correct that there is no WP:POLEMIC violation here and though I disagree deleting userboxes for blocked users, since it's apparently used by a single editor, deleting after substituting and orphaning the existing (and very minimal) transclusions as this is similar to what we did for the under-utilized Template:Bagel of Zion, as I believe that's the normal process. Pinging and  here as they are active at TfD. --Doug Mehus  T · C  23:19, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Userboxes go to MfD, not TfD. Adam9007 (talk) 23:45, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Where does it say that? Doug Mehus T · C  00:26, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:TFD Adam9007 (talk) 00:28, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that still seems odd as, what constitutes a userbox? We send service awards and barnstars to TfD, but technically, they're the same as a userbox. --Doug Mehus T · C  00:30, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd imagine it's exactly what WP:USERBOX says. Adam9007 (talk) 00:37, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete. Its only transclusion on a User base page is by a blocked user. Merits arguments aside, it's simply unused. --Bsherr (talk) 00:21, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Deleting templates for being unused is very frustrating when you have reason to look at page histories. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:24, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify what you mean here, or are wanting to say? Your argument sounds intriguing, and I'd like to understand it better. Doug Mehus T · C  00:29, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I do not think userboxes should be deleted for not being used, if they have been used on past versions of userpages. Someone may have blanked their userpage with Wikibreak or similar.  When they return and unblank, they should be able to do so without discovering userbox templates deleted for not being used.  Also, when attempting to understand the edits of a user long ago, it is useful to look at their userpage from that time.  Deleting once-used, but now no longer used templates is an action deleting and damaging the historical record.   --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:49, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Move to User:Alan McBrazil Burger/Userboxes/BNP, without leaving a redirect, and update the transclusion links on the various userbox directory pages, per above. Though it's only used by a user, currently a banned user, and we could substitute and delete, on principal here, I don't think we should delete and userifying this would be a perfectly acceptable alternative to deletion. Failing that, call it a Weak Keep as a second choice. Doug Mehus  T · C  14:17, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Userspace (without redirect, but fixing the transclusion) per Dmehus's and SmokeyJoe's arguments. Userfying is our most common approach (like, thousands of instances, albeit mostly a long time ago) to userboxes that do not belong in "Template:" or other namespaces. Can even move it to User:Alan McBrazil Burger/BNP, since there isn't any User:Alan McBrazil Burger/Userboxes/ tree into which to fit this. Users create personal, single-use templates in their userspaces all the time, and MfD has never considered this a problem. Content-wise, WP is open to far-right editors just as much as to far-left ones, and to authoritarians as much as to antiauthoritarians, as long as their viewpoint isn't being injected into articles or used as a WP:BATTLEGROUND/WP:ADVOCACY disruption pattern. I say this as a strong antiauthoritarian and former professional civil liberties activist, who finds the BNP respulsive, BTW.  This is a very different case from the other concurrent MfD about userboxes advocating necrophilia and zoophilia, which are clearly there just to rile people. BNP is a legit political party, and WP is tolerant of political-party identifiers as userboxes. They actually do serve a collaboration and encyclopedia-building purpose (even if only by accident), in wearing one's political bias on one's sleeve. The same can't be said for userboxes that are just about what weird stuff one supposedly likes to orgasm over.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Userfy per above. Userspace is suitable for userboxes not directly connected to project purposes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 31 January 2020 (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.