Wikipedia talk:Ownership of content#Unnecessary

Hi, I started a discussion at WP:Helpdesk#Etiquette for user home pages/sandboxen about whether user pages are somehow different from other pages, even sacrosanct? I ended up WP:OWN#User pages, which says "Usually others will not edit your primary user page, other than to address significant concerns (rarely); or to do routine housekeeping, such as handling project-related tags, disambiguating links to pages that have been moved, removing the page from categories meant for articles, replacing non-free content by linking to it, or removing obvious vandalism or BLP violations."" The concise answer from Wikipedia talk:Linter#User home pages was {{green|"Fixing Linter errors fits in with "routine housekeeping". All pages are fair game for fixing errors, replacing deleted templates, adjusting wikitext to conform to MediaWiki code changes, and other maintenance that keeps Wikipedia pages rendering correctly."}} Could this perhaps be clearly stated in the 'Background' section in the Project page, and elsewhere? MinorProphet (talk) 16:57, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

But doesn't Wikipedia belong to good ol' Jimbo, and/or the Wikimedia Foundation? So technically they own the rights to pretty much everything used and written on here... oh wait! They own talk pages, files, users, comments, and especially topics for discussion. They even own what I am writing right now! Ṫḧïṡ ṁëṡṡäġë ḧäṡ ḅëëṅ ḅṛöüġḧẗ ẗö ÿöü ḅÿ ᗰOᗪ ᑕᖇEᗩTOᖇ 🏡 🗨 📝 01:03, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

:{{u|Mod creator}}, Jimmy Wales is one of the founders but he does not own Wikipedia. As for the Wikimedia Foundation, it was founded 2-1/2 years after Wikipedia. It owns the trademarks and the servers but does not own the content. Cullen328 (talk) 01:18, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

::{{jk}}

::that is why I said it may seem crazy. {{humor note}} Ṫḧïṡ ṁëṡṡäġë ḧäṡ ḅëëṅ ḅṛöüġḧẗ ẗö ÿöü ḅÿ ᗰOᗪ ᑕᖇEᗩTOᖇ 🏡 🗨 📝 01:29, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

{{ping|Nikkimaria}} Could you expand on why you think [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content&diff=prev&oldid=1278226425 including two essays] in the see also section is "potentially confusing for users"? I cannot see it. Quickly scanning around, it also appears that the vast majority of see also sections on PAGs include, or indeed consist primarily of, related essays – even core policies like WP:V#See also and WP:NPOV#See also. – Joe (talk) 11:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

:Hi Joe, because newer users often struggle to understand the spectrum of policies through one user's essay, presenting the latter as is done here can be confusing for them and lead them to assign more weight to these than is appropriate. It may well be the case that other policies' see-alsos should be re-examined, but the cases you mention at least have the benefit of a much wider variety of resources being presented and correspondingly less of a weighting concern. And edit-warring to bring in your own essay is really not on - please self-revert. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:43, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

::You didn't just remove my essay, you removed both – the other has been there for [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AOwnership_of_content&diff=prev&oldid=287320870 sixteen years] so inclusion is definitely the status quo. Or do you object to the inclusion of Wikipedia:Gatekeeping specifically?

::It sounds like you have an issue with the inclusion of inclusion of essays in PAG see also sections in general, rather than just on WP:OWN. In which case I'd suggest it makes more sense to seek consensus on that issue rather than removing them from a single page. Personally I've never encountered users new or old being "confused" by the inclusion of these links, given that essays are generally have a large explanatory banner at the top explaining their consensus status. On the contrary I think they are the primary way most users encounter essays and therefore learn of the spectrum of thought on a topic. – Joe (talk) 10:38, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

:::I'm surprised you've never encountered the issue of users not understanding what essays are, since it seems to be a pretty common problem - here's a recent example.

:::I've explained why I think the links here are particularly problematic. While I appreciate you would like users to encounter your essay, its inclusion is definitely not status quo. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:20, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

::::Could you tell me again why linking to essays here is particularly problematic? I cannot find it. – Joe (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

:::::{{tq|the cases you mention at least have the benefit of a much wider variety of resources being presented and correspondingly less of a weighting concern}}; this page in particular does not. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:58, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Giraffedata, in section "Examples of ownership behaviour", [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content&diff=next&oldid=626361414 added]: "An editor reverts a change simply because the editor finds it "unnecessary" without claiming that the change is detrimental. This has the effect of assigning priority, between two equivalent versions, to an owner's version."

I believe this was a bad insertion which should be reverted.

It affects editors who've directly quoted a page, or have it on their watchlist. When they see non-improving editing they have to reconsider their quotes and waste their time analyzing whether their understanding of the page must change. In that context unnecessary change is detrimental according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines WP:EDITING which takes it for granted that editing is to improve (it contains variants of the word three times), WP:AGF which suggests we're supposed to assume intent to improve, and WP:DISRUPTIVE which starts with "Disruptive editing is a pattern of editing that disrupts progress toward improving an article or building the encyclopedia."

The mention of an owner's version causes confusion, it can make one think that we're talking about editor X reverting to a version by editor X, but the first sentence is more general so it can make one think we're talking about editor X reverting to a version by editor Y.

In a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_page_guidelines#Deletion_that_isn't_deletion talk page guidelines thread] I got accused of ownership tendencies because I hadn't explicitly said that what I was reverting was bad. I can shrug it off but the mere fact that the wording makes such accusation possible shows the wording's too easy to misuse. In a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:12_Monkeys#Ambiguous_ending 12 Monkeys thread] WP:OWN behaviour accusations happened when a change supposedly was called "not needed". There was an [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&oldid=836861522#RfC:_Is_it_encouraged_to_have_references_for_key_or_complex_plot_points_in_plot_sections? RfC], I believe the closer remark on Point #3 supports the accused. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:30, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

:I was the editor who complained about Peter reverting me, and I support keeping this long-standing (2014) addition. The change Peter reverted at WP:TPG was simple copyediting, and it IMO shouldn't have been reverted without a reason other than a personal belief that edits such as this:

:* "The basic rule, with exceptions outlined below, is to not edit or delete remove others' posts without their permission."

:are [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines&diff=prev&oldid=1294742155 "changing without improving"]. IMO this kind of reversion is exactly what WP:OWN and Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary are meant to discourage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 23 June 2025 (UTC)