Misplaced Pages

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A vanity page is a sort of page created by a Misplaced Pages user, usually about himself or his associates, afflicted with many problems:

1. The subject matter is not well-known enough for there to be multiple contributors. While fame shouldn't necessarily be a condition for inclusion, if a page is doomed eternally to be a one-editor page, it ought to be yanked.
2. Often reading like local newspapers' feature articles, vanity pages are usually highly POV and non-encyclopedic.
3. Such pages are usually poorly written.
4. Vanity pages almost always lack interesting content. "Bob Publicas was born on April 6, 1969 and is a toilet repairman" is highly interesting to Mr. Publicas, but not to anyone else.
5. These pages, often experimental, are usually written by people unfamiliar with Misplaced Pages and its content standards.
6. Finally, these pages rarely perform a function that cannot be achieved with a user page.

A vanity page need not be a page an individual writes about him- or herself. A page dedicated to a girlfriend, a family pet, or a social group at a high school can also be a vanity page.

Policy regarding vanity pages

Vanity pages are usually sent to Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion. Consensus for the deletion of the page normally ensues. Even famous Wikipedians have had pages about them, judged to be vanity pages, deleted.

If you judge an article to be a vanity page, and thus prone to the problems associated with such pages, you should request its deletion, unless the vanity page may be expanded so as no longer to have the problems associated with such pages.

The user who created the page is probably a new user. If there is nothing particularly offensive (or pathetic) about the page, please be kind to the newbie. Often, during deletion debates for vanity pages, disparaging comments fly about the subject of the page, the author (often these are presumed to be the same person) and the author's motives. These comments border on personal attacks, and may discourage the page's creator from future contributions.

Misplaced Pages is not a vanity press

The term encyclopædia derives from Medieval Latin and means, roughly, a course of general education (from Greek εγκυκλιος ("general") + παιδεια ("knowledge"). That is, what the generality of people interested in a particular subject or group of subjects might reasonably want to know. Misplaced Pages is, or rather aspires to be, an encyclopædia.

An encyclopaedia is not a forum for self-promotion or advertising. For anyone who really wants to get him- or herself into print, there are a number of organizations, some respectable and some not, that will publish documents. Misplaced Pages is not, nor does it aspire to be, a vanity press.

See also: Print on demand

What is a vanity page?

A page should not be cast away as "vanity" simply because it may have been authored by its subject, or because the subject is unfamous. There is presently no consensus about what degree of recognition is required for a page to be included in Misplaced Pages, and therefore, lack of fame should be ignored in deletion debates.

Rather than deleting vanity pages because their subjects are unfamous, such pages should be deleted because they are invariantly uninteresting. An example:

Ryan Broom is a 17-year-old student at Northridge High School. He recently scored 114% on a math test from Mr. Edwards, the highest score ever given by that teacher.

Ryan's girlfriend, Mindy, is hott. Click here to see her picture.

Currently, Broom is working on the Lent challenge. He's also a fan of Radiohead.

Ryan Broom is not famous (in fact, in this case, nonexistent) but that shouldn't matter, and his lack of fame alone shouldn't qualify the page for deletion. There are better reasons to delete this (hypothetical) page:

• It's highly POV, and likely to stay that way.
• It doesn't contain any interesting information. There are lots of students getting 114 percents on tests or guys with "hott" girlfriends, and they don't all merit a page.
• The page contains unverifiable and irrelevant information.
• Finally, it doesn't interact with other articles. There's no reason why any other page would benefit from having a link to this article.

See also: Misplaced Pages:Auto-biography