[WikiEN-l] Re: Madchester's wrongful blocking (user: shultz) (ip:68.102.193.78.)

Mon Oct 31 23:41:15 UTC 2005

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Brian Haws
> 
> On at the least the narrow point of deleting things off of 
> your own talk page, I see it done fairly often, admins and 
> non-admins alike. It's not a blockable offense is it?

It seems clear that the community expectation is that user pages are the
user's own property and users can delete as they see fit. If you delete
messages sent to you by others, then it is a reasonable assumption that you
have either read the message and no longer wish to see it, or for some
reason you don't want it on your talk page - perhaps it's vandalism, spam or
abusive. Either way, the message remains in the edit history and though it
may be inconvenient for a third party trying to sort out who said what to
whom, it can be done.

Even if it's something reasonably official, such as a notification of RFAr
or RFC proceedings, then it might be considered the same as service of a
summons. The recipient might immediately tear it up and throw it away
unread, but the summons has been served and there is an official record of
service. We can send someone a message, but we cannot force them to read it.

As has already been noted, it is easy to find examples of every sort of
behaviour. Some editors seem to never clear out their talk pages, others do
it frequently and obsessively. Perhaps this reflects the editor's personal
attitude to housecleaning and clutter rather than any considered adherence
to official policy!

--
Peter (Skyring)