![]() | This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Vandalism and other actions by anonymous users ( IPs) that provoke a talk page warning are very common on the English Wikipedia. Twenty years after the start of Wikipedia, there are hundreds of thousands of old IP talk pages with warnings, some stale by several years. Unless we take action, the number will continue to increase and over the decades they will become staler and less relevant to the current users of those IP addresses.
There have been a number of discussions and debates over the years about what to do with these pages. Some see them as valuable tools in finding systemic problematic behavior, particularly tracking long-term spamming of the site. Others see them as shrines to long-gone vandals, database bloat, or even a deterrent to the new user of that IP (after three or four years the vast majority of IP warnings will be associated with a completely different human or group of humans).
If you come across an old IP talk page, no action is necessary. If you wish, you can replace the contents of the page with an {{ OW}} template, use a welcome message or archive the page. The rest of this essay covers situations in which page preservation or page deletion may be appropriate. It should however be noted that since deleted pages remain in the database, deletion clears no disk space.
If you have any reason to believe that the talk page will one day be valuable, err on the side of keeping the page (consider blanking the page, and replacing it with an appropriate 'welcome' message—referring that there may be important messages in the history of the page).
If any of the following applies, the page should not be deleted:
If none of the above apply, and one of the following does apply, the pages can be nominated for deletion at Miscellany for deletion:
Pages should only be deleted on a case-by-case basis, after evaluating the IP's contributions and the talk page itself. The following is a list of criteria that can be used to evaluate whether a page can be deleted:
![]() | This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Vandalism and other actions by anonymous users ( IPs) that provoke a talk page warning are very common on the English Wikipedia. Twenty years after the start of Wikipedia, there are hundreds of thousands of old IP talk pages with warnings, some stale by several years. Unless we take action, the number will continue to increase and over the decades they will become staler and less relevant to the current users of those IP addresses.
There have been a number of discussions and debates over the years about what to do with these pages. Some see them as valuable tools in finding systemic problematic behavior, particularly tracking long-term spamming of the site. Others see them as shrines to long-gone vandals, database bloat, or even a deterrent to the new user of that IP (after three or four years the vast majority of IP warnings will be associated with a completely different human or group of humans).
If you come across an old IP talk page, no action is necessary. If you wish, you can replace the contents of the page with an {{ OW}} template, use a welcome message or archive the page. The rest of this essay covers situations in which page preservation or page deletion may be appropriate. It should however be noted that since deleted pages remain in the database, deletion clears no disk space.
If you have any reason to believe that the talk page will one day be valuable, err on the side of keeping the page (consider blanking the page, and replacing it with an appropriate 'welcome' message—referring that there may be important messages in the history of the page).
If any of the following applies, the page should not be deleted:
If none of the above apply, and one of the following does apply, the pages can be nominated for deletion at Miscellany for deletion:
Pages should only be deleted on a case-by-case basis, after evaluating the IP's contributions and the talk page itself. The following is a list of criteria that can be used to evaluate whether a page can be deleted: