user:Dronebogus/Unpersoning

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{{nutshell|Userpages are not guilty of the sins of the creator. Going through and deleting all of a blocked user’s personal pages is gratuitous WP:RAGPICKING}}

File:Portrait of family of Septimius Severus - Altes Museum - Berlin - Germany 2017.jpg]]

When a user is blocked, it can be tempting to take WP:DENY to ludicrous extremes by trying to obliterate any trace of the user outside of constructive projectspace edits.

However, if the content in your crosshairs is completely inoffensive, this is a bad idea for several reasons:

• Banned users are not outlaws. They are guilty of the WikiCrimes they were blocked for and nothing else, and there’s no need to use them as punching bags when they can’t fight back.
• It comes across as a petty and spiteful symbolic gesture and can be more disruptive than the actual user’s behavior.
• It’s WP:RAGPICKING and wastes people’s time.
• It encourages the idea that blocking is about draconian punitive justice and not preventative security, and makes new users scared to make good-faith mistakes or create harmless personal projects.
• Whatever they did is very likely not worthy of purging reminders of them from the public sphere a la denazification, destalinization, or the removal of confederate statues and memorials.

In short, judge content by its own merits, not the creator’s. If there’s nothing wrong in a vacuum there’s probably nothing wrong at all.