Wikipedia:Username policy/ORGNAME/G11 in sandboxes RFC

ORGNAME/G11 in sandboxes RFC

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Several discussions, both recent and in past years, have brought up questions regarding the utility and fairness of how we deal with promotional names. It seems as though a review is in order so that consensus on how the community wants this policy enforced is more clear. 21:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Relevant policy sections

From ORGNAME: The following types of usernames are not permitted because they are considered promotional:

Usernames that unambiguously represent the name of a company, organization, website, product, musical group or band, team, club, creative group, or organized event ...
and
A user who both adopts a promotional username and who engages in inappropriate advertising or promotional edits or behaviors – especially when made to their own user space or to articles about the company, group, or product – can be blocked from editing Wikipedia, and are often blocked much sooner than users who engage in only one of the two behaviors. In such cases, administrators should examine the user's edits to decide whether or not to allow them to create a new username. If there is evidence that the user would continue to edit inappropriately under a new username, the blocking administrator should enable the "autoblock" and "prevent account creation" block settings. Otherwise, the user should be offered the opportunity to create a new account or have their current username changed. Before taking action, any disagreements as to whether a particular username is acceptable or not should be discussed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names first.

From G11: G11. Unambiguous advertising or promotion ... This applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to serve as encyclopedia articles, rather than advertisements. If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text written from a neutral point of view, this is preferable to deletion.

Rationale

There is obviously broad agreement that using Wikipedia for promotion of any kind is unnacceptable. However, there is also often a presumption that all users doing so are malicious spammers acting in bad faith, when it is far more likely that in most cases they are simply mistaken about the scope and purpose of Wikipedia.
There is also the question of whether issuing no-warning soft-blocks to ORGNAME violators is the right approach. The soft block allows the user to create another account and try to edit without running afoul of our spamming policies, but, by making creating a new account the easier option, we lose track of these editors, we often don't know if they simply gave up or if they created a new account with a more acceptable name. It is also worth noting that the ORGNAME policy was created at a time when it was still possible for non-autoconfirmed accounts to create pages in article space. This has not been the case in some time.
The purpose of this discussion is to gauge community consensus on these issues and additionally to possibly alter current procedures to avoid biting newcomers who have not been advised of these issues before being no-warning blocked.
Additional proposals may be added, but please confine them to the subject of the RFC, which is blocking of ORGNAME accounts and promotional or semi-promotional content in user sandboxes.

A quick note on terminology

In the world of username blocks, a "soft block" is a block without autoblock enabled and with account creation enabled, and where the user is explicitly told they are free to simply create a new account. Currently, this is often used when the name is a violation, but all edits have been in their own userspace or in a draft. A "hard block" is a block with autoblock enabled and account creation disabled, and the user is instructed that they must choose a new username and convince reviewing admins they will cease adding promotional content in order to be unblocked. This is usually the default option when a users' name is a violation, and they have been posting promotional content in article space.

Proposal:warn instead of block in some cases

The current common pracice of soft blocking ORGNAME violators, as often as not, ends up giving no clue as to whether the user chose a new name, or if they simply gave up on Wikipedia. Many such users have never actually edited an article at all, but have submitted a draft or created a page in userspace regarding the organization their name represents. Such edits are not harmful to reader-facing content, even if they do still qualify for deletion as promotional.
In the cases where they do appeal this type of block, they are often renamed, but not immediately unblocked, due to the ongoing backlog of unblock requests. As of this writing there are eighty items in Category:Requests for unblock, and that is not unusual. So these users have done as they were asked yet remain blocked. If they were told "change your name and stop adding promotional content" before they are blocked, that provides a greater chance for a course correction.
It is also likely that in the majority of cases the user genuinely did not know how harshly promotional content is viewed on Wikiedia, and the project is better served by educating users as opposed to blocking them with no warning over a username violation they didn't know they were committing and a single edit in user or draft space.
The following is therefore proposed:

In cases where the user's name is an ORGNAME violation, but they have made no promotional mainspace edits, admins are advised to warn rather than block. Offending content in user or draft space may still be deleted at the admins' discretion. If the user chooses to ignore the concern and continues editing, still outside of mainspace, they may then be soft blocked. This explicitly does not apply to users with ORGNAMES that have posted promotional content in article space, who may be hard or soft blocked at the discretion of the blocking admin.

Support:warn instead of block in some cases

This seems like the best way to go to avoid biting good-faith users and more readily distinguish them from those acting in bad faith, aiding editor retention. All of these are things that will benefit the project, with no to very minimal downsides. Thryduulf (talk) 21:31, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As proposer, I support this appraoch. We give vandals who are acting bad faith more opportunities to change their approach than we do to people who submit spammy drafts at AFC. That just doesn't feel right. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 21:36, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support - there should not be an automatic block for this. Giant Snowman 21:50, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, avoids biting users who haven't caused actual disruption, while still giving them constructive advice they might have missed between all of our policies and guidelines. To close a loophole (users having made innocuous edits in mainspace, while having only posted problematic content in user/draftspace), I suggest replacing no mainspace edits with no promotional mainspace edits. Also, still outside of mainsapce should be still outside of mainspace, I'm not sure if I can fix typos in the original proposal after the RfC started. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:57, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Only if the primary reason for the block was the user name. If someone's making such terrible edits that they need to be blocked, the question of whether or not their username is unacceptable too is mainly going to affect which block template is used. And, yes, sometimes edits that are solely in userspace are enough to block for. Telling someone "please stop recreating your sandbox saying your company exemplifies all! of the buzzwords!" until they've done it enough times that they can do it in mainspace too is not the answer. —Cryptic 23:29, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose:warn instead of block in some cases

Discussion:warn instead of block in some cases

I'd like to begin the conversation by making it clear that this is not intended to call out individual admins or admin actions. It has been standard practice to block these accounts for many years,and I am absolutely as guilty of it as anyone else. Recent conversations have caused me to strongly question whether this approach is fair, and also whether it is actually effective. One user or draft space edit + a username you probably didn't know was against policy = indef block. That's how it has been being done by myself and many others, but I think it is time to reexamine that approach. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 21:34, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So these users have done as they were asked yet remain blocked. Does this actually happen? I haven't seen it. It's usually the other way around - they're waiting on a renamer, for ages and ages. -- asilvering (talk) 22:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have statistics or anything but I have seen it many times. In any event it seems better to at least give them a chance before they are blocked to correct the problems. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 22:08, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
tbh I'd prefer to advocate for a third option: ditch the "promo softblock" entirely. I've seen admins use it where there were also promo edits (so, a hardblock is warranted), and I've seen it used where there were no edits (so, I think - who the hell cares? no need to block these guys at all), which just leaves the folks in the middle who aren't so spammy you need to block on sight but are actually making edits, and I think we should just warn these people. That is to say, I have yet to see or imagine a promo softblock that seemed worth doing. -- asilvering (talk) 22:13, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

{{uw-softerblock}} specifically instructs users to create a new account, at least as prominently as it tells them to rename. I've got to assume that's usually what happens, whether they have unactioned rename requests/post-rename unblock requests or not. I've certainly seen the same happen plenty of times with {{uw-spamublock}}, which - as someone who monitors this area from the G11 side, not the UAA side, so there's usually already been promotional editing - I tend to use a whole lot more. —Cryptic 22:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this question is probably presented reasonably. I wonder if though it's perhaps important to force users to meet our other requirements, such as user names assignable to a single person. That seems to be one of the other worries contemplated by "has an org name", rather than just that org name posting Stuff that relates to itself, and I don't think this question or the preceding matter really speaks to that concern. Izno (talk) 22:13, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've always been of two minds about this. The original reasoning, as I remember it, was that the username itself is disruptive; nobody wants to look at a history page and see a column of "Companyname Marketing Department" as the authors. I know I don't. But getting a column of "Sally Jean, who is Innocent as the Driven Snow" in the editor column doesn't actually make the same edits any better, and it does make them harder to find. —Cryptic 22:28, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question:Should G11 apply to sandboxes?

User sandbox pages are expressly in existence for users do experiments and tests, and are supposed to have much looser standards for what is acceptable than any other kind of page. They have no profile on search engines and readers would have to know exactly where to look to even find them
Therefore the following question is posed:

Should more lattitude be given regarding deleting content that would otherwise qualify for G11 if that conent is in a sandbox and has not been submitted to AFC as a draft? Should users be blocked solely for promotional content in user sandbox pages?

G11 generally applies to sandbox pages equally with other pages

Yes AfC and use of draft space are entirely optional for autoconfirmed editors and a new account can become autoconfirmed during the process of drafting a promotional pseudo-article. That sandbox can then be instantly added to the encyclopedia. It is best, in my view, to nip such commonplace promotional efforts in the bud by tagging with G11 as soon as the incipient advertisement is detected. As for blocking, not solely for that, but if the username is also promotional, they should be blocked. Cullen328 (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - G11 should apply anywhere/everywhere. Giant Snowman 21:50, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. I do tend to be more lenient when reviewing G11 tags in userspace (and draftspace) than in main. On the other hand, the worst such pages mostly don't make it into mainspace anymore, which I interpret as the system working. Anecdotally, I'd guess around two thirds of those I've seen that did make it to mainspace started out as a sandbox or draft, weren't caught there, and were moved into mainspace by the creator after they became autoconfirmed. —Cryptic 21:57, 16 December 2024 (UTC) expanded 22:06, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- The section name I actually agreed with and added signed comments under was "Yes, G11 generally applies to sandbox pages", with the one below "No, G11 does not generally apply to sandbox pages". Same with the two users above me and Chaotic Enby below me. Permalink. G11 is already treated with more lenience in userspace than mainspace, not just by me, but by most administrators (judging by what I've seen come up at DRV), so I guess I'd be in a "no change to current practice" section now. Certainly not in either the "treat G11 the same everywhere" this section has been changed into, or the "treat them even more leniently than now" strongly implied by the one below. —Cryptic 22:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, G11 should apply in user sandboxes, although with a lot more leniency, similar to draftspace. User sandboxes do not expire (unlike drafts), but are even less visible. However, companies can still use a sandbox as a "fake Wikipedia article" destined to people not familiar with it, although I am not sure how frequently that happens (and WP:NOTWEBHOST still applies). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As per Cryptic, my answer does not reflect the new name of the section: G11 should certainly be applied with more leniency in user sandboxes than, say, in mainspace. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, G11 should be applied more sparingly on sandbox pages

There are plenty of situations when sandboxes should be deleted under G11. G11 should apply everywhere. But as silverwing notes below, we tell users that they have more lattitude to experiment in their sandboxes. And so it seems to me that admins should use their discretion and consider the totality of circumstances before deleting as G11 which may mean that a few sandbox works don't get deleted where they might in posted somewhere else. I'm not sure how big of a problem this really is or how much discrestion is needed for sandboxes compared to other spaces. But the option should be there. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:Question:Should G11 apply to sandboxes?

Just some thoughts- Sandboxes are also used to draft articles for submission via Articles for Creation by new users unaware of WP:WIZARD or Draft space(especially once they figure out new accounts can't create articles directly). On the other side, some of them think that sandboxes are private and test drafting an article about something they are familiar with- their company/employer/organization- with no intention of submitting it or publishing it in the encyclopedia at all, unaware that all edits are public. Most of those don't mind it being deleted as promotional. I would tend to think that there should not be a blanket prohibition on G11 in sandboxes, but maybe some clarification. 331dot (talk) 21:35, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I worded it this way, I'm thinking of just being less hardcore about it all the time, not saying it can never happen. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 21:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict × 2) I think two separate questions are being asked here - one about whether, and if so how strictly, G11 should be applied to sandbox content (my answer: yes, but very rarely - pretty much only when the user has repeatedly created extremely spammy content and has been warned not to multiple times) and the second whether editors should be blocked for posting promotional content in sandboxes (my answer: only if they have ignored multiple explicit warnings). As you can see, I'm also finding it tricky to answer a simple yes or no to either of those questions. Thryduulf (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is for sure the thornier of the two issues. I'm not really totally sure I've even presented the right question. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 21:55, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some stats: just short of 44% of G11 deletions in 2024 were in userspace; about 42.5% of those were specifically the /sandbox subpage. —Cryptic 21:52, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Beeblebrox this is a mismatch between the question posed in the section and the specific question posed in the box in detail. Yes to an answer in the section would say use G11 where as yes to the specific question would say "hold on there with G11". I would suggest these be harmonized. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:56, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was something about this making me vaguely uncomfortable and I think you've just clearly defined it. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 22:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I personally don't process G11 in user space, well, at all to be frank. Among a few reasons, it just doesn't seem like a good expenditure of time, for some of the reason of findability. Maybe it's worth continuing to use G11 in this space in case we should ever change our minds about whether to index the user space (which I honestly see to be something in the realm of possible, if even in any given year you might see an RFC otherwise - not that we've had one since we turned indexing off). Izno (talk) 22:00, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And I wonder whether 'sandbox' should be taken to mean 'subpage' or also perhaps someone's user page, some of which are tagged with G11 as well. Izno (talk) 22:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, don't most G11 user pages also fall under U5 already? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is a sandbox a plausible draft? A user page? Pages in userspace consisting of writings, information, discussions, or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals, where the owner has made few or no edits outside of user pages, except for plausible drafts... Izno (talk) 22:07, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was asking about user pages specifically, not userspace sandboxes/drafts, sorry if I wasn't clear. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Almost none, unless you interpret U5 as "anything a new user creates in userspace that I don't like". Which, to be fair, is how it's mostly treated by people who don't read past the prompt in Twinkle. —Cryptic 22:10, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm struggling to see an example of user page (not userspace sandbox, user page) that would fall under G11 but not under U5 – except if you're counting plausible drafts created directly on the userpage? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A promotional draft is still plausibly a draft. —Cryptic 22:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
True, that does make sense – I'm guessing you also count most promotional, LinkedIn-style "user profiles" as vaguely plausible drafts? To be fair, I do still feel like the bar for a user page should be higher than for a userspace sandbox, as they are inherently a lot more visible, and moving plausible drafts from the user page itself to the user's sandbox can be a good compromise. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:51, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My mantra's always been that even a terrible attempt at writing an article is still an attempt at writing an article. Promotionalism isn't any part of U5, and while there is some overlap - resumes formatted as resumes are both inherently promotional and can't reasonably be interpreted as article attempts - in practice most pages that qualify for one of these criteria aren't a good fit for the other. Re visibility, user subpages get mirrored just as quickly and widely as user pages do, and are just as searchable whether or not we noindex or delete them here. Not nearly so highly ranked, but that doesn't matter if you're the only hit for the phrases you use. —Cryptic 23:07, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was more thinking about visibility in terms of how often they are linked (like in signatures), but you do make a good point. Thanks a lot! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:38, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno in my opinion, anyway, we ought to be particularly hesitant to delete user sandboxes, over all types of possible crap creations, since we explicitly tell editors (in the sandbox template, in many of the twinkle warning messages) to "practice editing" in their user sandbox. It's pretty harsh to delete/block for taking us at our word. -- asilvering (talk) 22:06, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically about indexing: before we added the edit filter to prevent new users from adding the INDEX magic word to userspace, we got a constant stream of people abusing it. I used to watch Category:Indexed pages; for every reasonable user page manually indexed, I saw about a dozen unacceptable but non-speedyable drafts and about a hundred G11s. —Cryptic 22:18, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not shocked. I've seen the magic word in mainspace too, I assume for pages that haven't been patrolled. Perhaps we can take the presence of the magic word as a tell to continue applying G11 to sandboxes. Izno (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I think this is a poorly worded RfC. I am wholeheartedly in agreement with the statement more lattitude [should] be given regarding deleting content that would otherwise qualify for G11 if that conent is in a sandbox and has not been submitted to AFC as a draft. So you'd think I'd be able to respond "yes" to the question. But "yes" appears to be intended as the opposite of agreeing with the stated question. And the yes/no answers don't really follow from the question anyway, leading to the problem Thryduulf has observed. (I agree, actually, with the "yes" statement.) I think it's intensely bitey to delete sandboxes and we should do it really very sparingly (my own rule of thumb is, more or less, if it's not bad enough to block for, it's not bad enough to delete, either). There have been several discussions on my talk page to this effect. But I can't really !vote for either side of this RfC. -- asilvering (talk) 22:00, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I could've done better with the phrasing. I've tried to make the distinction more clear, but with people already voting I don't think it would be appropriate to completely change it. El Beeblerino ^{if you're not into the whole brevity thing} 22:06, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very few people have voted so far. I don't think it's a good idea to be changing policy based on an RfC that we noticed was kinda dodgy less than half an hour after it started. Can we convert an RfC to a "workshop"? -- asilvering (talk) 22:09, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
+1 to the workshop idea. I appreciate the effort @Beeblebrox, but I couldn't find a neutral and brief statement of what this RfC is even asking and I stopped looking for one after scrolling down five paragraphs. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:28, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree this question would benefit from workshopping. It's a question that is worthwhile asking, but it needs to be clearer about what is being asked and what it means to support/oppose. Thryduulf (talk) 23:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree too, especially after the heading under which me and others commented got changed to mean something completely different. I think this RfC should definitely be workshopped before people start commenting on it. I've myself started a RfC once without it being fully thought-out, and well, lesson very much learned here. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The best time to change such a thing is in the past. The next best time is now. Izno (talk) 22:14, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]