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 discussion was: keep . Plausible arguments were made that these could be used without the deleted categories. RL0919 (talk) 19:01, 23 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Time stamp for bot to properly relist.) Hhkohh (talk) 05:30, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pointless templates which indicate a user's lack of any ability to communicate in the given language.

Even the most proficient linguist has skills in at best a few dozen of the world's hundreds of languages, so fr any given user, the list of zero-ability languages will have hundreds of entries. Therefore marking those languages in which a user has zero skills is as pointless as marking all the towns in which they don not live, or the subjects in which they do not have a university degree.

Sadly, this pointlessness has malign effects. Because of the way the Babel system works, these templates populate eponymous categories: e.g. ((User ckb-0)) populates Category:User ckb-0.

Such categories have been repeatedly deleted at WP:CFD, because do nothing to assist collaboration between users; see an incomplete list at WP:Categories for discussion/User/Archive/Topical index#Wikipedians_by_0-level_language_knowledge. The 6 categories populated by these 6 templates have been nominated for deletion at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 November 27#Category:User_qwh-0. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:44, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really think editors are going to all of a sudden start adding thousands of userboxes for all the languages they don't speak: from what I've seen, these template are used by people who extensively edit in areas where knowledge of a given language may be presumed, ~~for example the first template is used by the main contributor to the corresponding language article.~~ These are then useful as a sort of disclaimer ("I edit extensively about X, but be warned that I don't speak a word of the language"). Hence keep, unless evidence is given of actual harm. And btw, weren't userboxes meant to be discussed at WP:MFD? – Uanfala (talk) 01:05, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Uanfala: The harm caused by these templates is that they impose a burden on those who maintain categories, without any sign of apparent user benefit. These are all templates for small minority languages, where it is exceptionally unlikely that anyone would presume knowledge of the language.

Only two of these templates are in use at all; both on User:Heval7884, where there are so many other userboxes that nobody is likely to find these ones. They are just decoration. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The last template for example is for the Central Kurdish language and it's used by an editor who edits Kurdistan-related articles and who professes (via another userbox) a Kurdish identity, so it's not really far-fetched to assume they might speak the language. These templates do serve a clear purpose. there appear to be about 340 such userbox templates [1], and some of them like ((User es-0)) or ((User ja-0)) have hundreds of transclusions. As for the categories they generate, I see why they might not be needed: it makes sense to categorise users with possession of specific competences, but probably not so much ones without. If the presence of this categories really is a maintenance burden, then the solution is to suppresss them by tweaking the templates (either the individual ones or the metatemplate they use). – Uanfala (talk) 13:22, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural close, please. See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion § What not to propose for discussion here: Userboxes should be listed at Miscellany for deletion, regardless of the namespace in which they reside. This needs to be taken to MfD. cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 18:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
wrong venue per above. Frietjes (talk) 19:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note The above discussion was transferred from WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2018_November 27#Template:User_qwh-0 Hhkohh (talk) 05:24, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
delete per CfD discussion Hhkohh (talk) 05:30, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
delete per CfD discussion and seriously what use are these? If you don't speak a language you don't need to advertise it. Creates a burden on the category people. Legacypac (talk) 05:48, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or at minimum userfy if someone wishes to keep them in their userspace. Informing people that you don't speak a language does not seem like a useful enough reason to allow for a template space userbox conveying that information. VegaDark (talk) 07:06, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Re the !votes above: the reason for the existence of these templates was explained in the comments above. Couldn't we at least address that rather that vote as though it's not there? And I don't think the previous CfDs are of much relevance here: if the existence of the categories is a problem, then – apologies for repeating myself – the templates can be tweaked to ommit adding them. – Uanfala (talk) 12:49, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I considered the argument to keep (such as it is) and found the CFD discussions more compelling. Legacypac (talk) 22:15, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's difficult to imagine what could be so compelling in a CfD discussion consisting almost entirely in bare bolded votes. – Uanfala (talk) 22:53, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In general, I have not observed that "these template are used by people who extensively edit in areas where knowledge of a given language may be presumed". Now, granted, that's only my perspective, and I am sure that is the case in some cases, but more often I have observed users applying these templates far less purposefully. Even if some editors do use the templates as disclaimers, an incorrect presumption of linguistic ability can be cleared up very quickly via a talk page message, and so I still see little or no utility in the disclaimer itself. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the CfD discussion. Useless. CoolSkittle (talk) 01:43, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - While I, too, find the case for deletion much more compelling than the offered argument for retention, I think any solution ought to be applied to all 0-level language userboxes or to none. Therefore, I would prefer a wider discussion (perhaps at Wikipedia talk:Babel rather than one that focuses on just a handful of languages). -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Agree with Black Falcon that the issue is common to all 0-level language userboxes, and I note a point of confusion, including by VegaDark, that 0 means zero, whereas 0 actually means “very little”, which is non-zero. 1-level means “basic”. 0 level users can presumably understand with difficulty, and may have even greater difficulty responding. I don’t think these are useless, even if the categorisation of such users is useless. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:19, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That distinction means nothing to me insofar as usefulness to the encyclopedia, either for a template or category. VegaDark (talk) 22:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, but deleting userboxes due to perceived uselessness sounds like a restart of the user box wars. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:09, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There was a solution for that, Wikipedia:Userbox migration, which is an acceptable solution to me in this scenario (as per above I mentioned userfication was acceptable). VegaDark (talk) 06:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template:User afh-0. — Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 21:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as useful for anyone with a babel module on their global userpage. Not a very strong keep, as a -0 declaration of anything except en-0 isn't very useful here, but it may be mildly useful and shouldn't be breaking anything. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:04, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep there can be real reasons to use these templates, an d some have been cited above in this discussion. DGG ( talk ) 02:00, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep as there have been potential use cases outlined. These templates may also be useful if the lack of ability to speak a certain language may be surprising e.g. if a user lives in Germany but doesn't speak German. Hut 8.5 17:37, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Template:User qwh-0[edit]