Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Staffwaterboy/thanks

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 debate was delete. ➪HiDrNick! 20:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User:Staffwaterboy/thanks

Uses the random acts of kindness barnstar to reward signing a guestbook. Encourages WP:MYSPACE, rewards a behaviour that has nothing to do building an encyclopedia or helping other editors to stay and improve articles, and devaluates the purpose of the kindness barntar. See other similar guestbook barnstar deletion debates at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2008_March_19#Template:The_Guestbook_Barnstar and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Wwesocks/guestbook/barnstar. Enric Naval (talk) 21:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

• Delete - there is a strong precedent for deleting these 'you've found my secret page/signed my book' barnstars, and with good reason. They encourage WP:MYSPACE-ish behaviour [there is a case that guestbooks alone may do this] and foster cabal-building. Barnstars were created to reward people for encyclopedic work, not something that is superficial and takes in the region of 5 seconds to do. If every user had one of these personalised guestbook-barnstars and gave them to everyone who signed their book, not only would user pages become immensely cluttered, but that 'doom-and-gloom' vision of a wikimyspace would finally be true! ><RichardΩ612 09:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
• Hmm, tricky - I strongly oppose the deletion of guestbooks (and I don't think citing WP:MYSPACE is a strong argument), but I do think this is a misuse of the barnstar concept. Barnstars are intended to reward good encyclopedic contributions, and this kind of thing simply devalues them; since we don't pay people to write for us, and contributors are our most important resource, it's important that a barnstar, being one of the few rewards we can offer people, should be a genuine badge of honour. and should not just be given out for signing guestbooks. Weak Delete accordingly, but I am open to change if someone offers a persuasive argument for keeping the page. Walton^One 09:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete Barnstars are rewarded for work to the mainspace or other process, not for simply putting your sig on a page. STORMTRACKER 94 ^{Go Irish!} 21:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete I strongly agree that editors matter, but I do not believe that a barnstar for signing a guestbook is appropriate. Acalamari 23:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. Takes guestbook sillyness to a whole new level. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 23:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment author placed a "hangon" template, which I removed, see [1] --Enric Naval (talk) 04:00, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

• Neutral As per above its not very importent to me thought [2]

Staffwaterboy ^Talk♂ 02:02, 21 April 2008 (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.