Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Don't be attracted to the infobox's bright colors

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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:  Userfy. – Novem Linguae (talk) 15:50, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Don't be attracted to the infobox's bright colors

 * – (View MfD) &#8203;
 * C LYDE TALK TO ME/STUFF DONE (please mention me on reply) 19:50, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Userfy. Trivial, duplicative, and not helpful. This is theoretically a page aimed at new editors... who don't read Wikipedia essays anyway and are already subjected to a blizzard of incomprehensible links and acronyms strictly from Wikipedia policies, let alone essays, if they do go looking...  telling them to make genre warrior edits in prose, not just the Infobox? This isn't particularly useful. At best, it's a duplicate of Genre warrior. At worst, it's a strange Don't stuff beans up your nose violation - we don't need 20 mini-essays on "don't make bad edits to infoboxes", "don't make bad edits to the lede", "don't make bad edits to templates", "don't make bad edits to categories", etc. Our standards in user-space are super-lenient of editors who just want to share a random thought they have, so I'm not necessarily asking for deletion, but going to Wikipedia space has an expectation of at least some value to the larger community, which I don't believe this essay has, hence MFD.

Finally, while the essay should stand or fall on its own merits, it's a bit of a warning sign when a new essay is created by an account who's been around for less than a month. Writing new Wikipedia-space essays should not be high on the to-do list of a new or returning editor. (Full disclosure: the editor says they're a returning editor from an undisclosed older account.)

(Procedural note: I considered filing a WP:RM for this since I'm technically not asking for deletion, but eh, RM doesn't deal with Wikipedia space that often and userfication is not an uncommon result of MFD, so I felt MFD was a better fit.) SnowFire (talk) 23:38, 26 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep - You claim that it's duplicative, yet there doesn't appear to be any other essays similar to this. In addition, this page isn't necessarily aimed at passerby editors. It's aimed more at newer editors who are getting adjusted to the policies and guidelines. Also, it don't see how it violates WP:BEANS (a humorous essay, I might add). It's not Don't vandalize Wikipedia or Don't remove every citation - we would hate that, it's saying don't make essentially meaningless edits to the infobox without changing the body text. That's probably one of the most boring disruptive edits I can even think of. There's no point, it's just (sort of) annoying and it would take more time than it's worth in humor (which is none). Sincerely, Key of G Minor. Tools: (talk, contribs) 00:10, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * In addition, I also plan to expland it Sincerely, Key of G Minor. Tools: (talk, contribs) 00:20, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * On duplicative: The essays that cover this is Genre warrior for why changing genres is bad, Help:Infobox for advice on what is good in Infoboxes, and the lead of Manual of Style/Infoboxes for the guidance that an Infobox is a summary of the article (and hence the infobox should match the prose). "Don't make meaningless edits" is just common sense. SnowFire (talk) 04:14, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Userfy or Delete There is nothing here that isn't covered in Genre warrior. ~ Matthewrb  Talk to me &middot;  Changes I've made 01:15, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, C LYDE TALK TO ME/STUFF DONE (please mention me on reply) 19:50, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Userfy (was summoned by a RFC POLICY BOT). It seems to only be about music genres, not infoboxes in general; maybe it will grow one day. — xaosflux  Talk 09:42, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Userfy would probably be the best way to proceed here. —  Sundostund  mppria  (talk / contribs) 21:48, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep - Being duplicative is not a reason to delete essays. We have multiple essays about not edit-warring and not bludgeoning, and we don't delete them.  Other than that, this is reasonable advice to new editors.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:23, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment - If I am shown a policy or guideline that says that essays may not duplicate other essays, then maybe I will propose a few existing essays for deletion. Then again, I might not.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Robert McClenon WP:Content forking would probably be the closest guideline. It has a subpage "explanatory essay", WP:Content forking/Internal, which covers forking of behind the scenes stuff like essays, policies, discussions etc, but that page is not itself a policy or guideline. 192.76.8.82 (talk) 00:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak keep or userfy - The essay was created a few days ago, and no, it's not quite ripe yet. When I created WP:HOWITN, I workshopped it in my userspace for a while and got input from other editors before I went ahead and moved it into project-space, mostly to ensure that it reflected a consensus of viewpoints, even if not a total, unanimous consensus. I'm averse to deleting essays that aren't outright garbage, but if it did come to that, it should at least be userfied to allow for further development. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper - (talk)  14:08, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep . This essay is not duplicative. It's in a mostly embryonic stage, but the essential point that infoboxes lead to ridiculous disputes that would not have otherwise occurred and that they attract SPAs and tendentious and battleground behavior, and edit wars, coming from users who are not especially WP:HERE, and as such are not motivated to seriously study the references, or at least read the whole article, to edit the body of the article, and who do not understand that infoboxes and similar supporting elements are subordinated to article prose, is more than valid. Explaining this as "This is usually because the infobox is the first thing people look at the second the page loads" is absolutely correct. —Alalch E. 16:18, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * While there's nothing in particular that I'd change in my above comment, I now believe that it's very unlikely that this essay will attract the significant work that is needed to bring it to a usable state. I feel that I get the core idea, and think that it's valid, but the essay, as written, does not express this idea well enough to everyone, and I don't even see it as a particularly good start either. Therefore, userfy.—Alalch E. 17:34, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Comment from nominator. I didn't want to get too much into it because there's diminishing returns in going on at great length, but to talk a bit more about some of the issues raised since there were some later keep votes.  Userfication is not deletion.  Some  influential essays sit in user space that are reasonably commonly cited, such as User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased. or User:Ritchie333/Why admins should create content.  So it's not being sent to jail or anything.  But, there is a reason to at least start in userspace - there is a cost, if minor, to having multiple versions of the same essay, or to have useful advice buried under 5 different resayings of the same advice.  Wikipedia is already extremely inclusionist in the essay space, but even then, there are limits; the whole distinction between user essays and community essays is that we do try to organize the Wikipedia-essays at least a little.  As the IP noted above, see WP:Content forking for more on why.  Finally, Key of G Minor cited the fact that WP:BEANS is humorous as if it was a point against it, but this is where I'd argue your newness to Wikipedia is working against you.  Yes, it's a humorous essay, but WP:BEANS has a ton of community cred behind it.  See this search for WP:BEANS at just the Village Pump, and now consider it gets cited all the time at AN, ANI, IRC, Discord, etc. as well.
 * That all said... and I didn't want to get into this too deeply, because again, if this was a user space essay, who cares... but I don't think the essay is true or very helpful.  The tone of the essay appears to be addressing genuine new Wikipedia editors.  This essay seems to think that a major problem new editors have is being distracted by infoboxes, when I'd argue this isn't really true, and it's perpetuating a wrong idea.  Genre warriors exist, but newbies aren't genre warriors; genre warriors are genre warriors, if that makes any sense.  Here's the edit history of Midnights, the best selling album of 2022, and while it was semi-protected some of the time, I'm not seeing tons of edits to the Infobox, and those that are to the Infobox appear to be productive or at worst harmless.  So I question this as useful advice for newbies.  If a genre editor wants to argue over it, then something harsher like  WP:Genre warrior is better to tell them to stop, not a cutesy tutorial that will be shrugged off as "I'm not a newbie."  But I don't want to get into the weeds too much of debating the merits of the essay.  Just saying that it's not clear this essay is useful to me, but if it is useful after all, it can still be useful in user space.  SnowFire (talk) 06:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment – the user who created this essay is now CU-blocked, in case that changes any of the "userfy" !votes. (The page is not G5-eligible since the user doesn't appear to have been evading a block when the essay was created.) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Userfy, regardless of the standing of the author. Unless the page is the reason for the block, the block is irrelevant to the merit of the page. I see nothing inherently wrong with the essay, ut as a disputed single source essay, the default should be to Userfy. SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete (the vote would have been Userfy but for the CU-block of the creator.) We don't need If you're gonna be a genre or ideology warrior and change, add or remove things without sources, at least delve into the juicer parts of the text. in project-space.  And there's no point moving it to userspace for a CU-blocked user. Walt Yoder (talk) 01:11, 11 July 2023 (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.