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I would suggest copyright images do not qualify as fair use when used in user boxes, and so there should be a policy against the use of such images in this way. Hiding talk 13:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest the opposite of what Mr. Block suggests. Fair use includes social commentary and satire/parody, either or both of which userboxes practice, depending on the userbox in question. To suggest that they aren't would definitely be a violation of WP:BEANS. -- CJ Marsicano 22:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Or at least not a seperate policy. What is allowed on a userpage should not be banned from userboxes (except for things like WP:AMT that apply to all templates for technical reasons) and conversely what is allowed in a userbox should not be something that would not be allowed on a userpages. Hence the logical thing to do is not to create a seperate policy just for userboxes, but to add a section on templates on userpages in general to WP:UP and promote it to policy if need be. WP:UP already says that if the comunity ask you to take down something you have on your userpage you should comply, so it's not like it is a complete free for all zone. WP:FU, WP:NPA, WP:NOT and WP:CIVIL all still apply and should be enforced regardles of wether the offending content is in a userbox or not. I would encourage the userbox project to try and make some checks on the creation of new templates though. Templates that only interest one or two people should be made by substring the userbox template rather than creating yet another template page to do the job. "One shot" templates should as aways be substed and deleted, or at least "userified".
On a slightly related issue I think Wikipedia:User categorisation and Wikipedia:Wikiproject userboxes should be merged or at least cooperate closesly to "police" the creation of new categories and templates for userpages. Much like Wikipedia:Wikiproject stub sorting works for stub templates and categories today. People who detest that kind of beurocracy could still be free to create and subst one shot boxes based on the "meta" userbox template, but creation of new categories and template pages should idealy go though some kind of aproval at the relevant project(s) first. -- Sherool (talk) 15:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I think the last thing we need to create more policies and more restrictions; all I think we should do is clarify the current policies and decide how far they apply to userpage spaces. Eightball 19:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Proponents of this policy fear that userboxes will lead to Wikipedians with similar POVs networking and uniting for common agendas.
My primary problem with this argument is its verifiability.
Put it this way. Imagine things had happened the other way around. Imagine we had never had userboxes and were now debating whether they should be permitted for the first time. We would have to deal with speculative questions like this. If we have userboxes, will our NPOV and encyclopaedic nature be compromised?
But we have had userboxes for some time. We don't need to speculate; we need only look around. We have userboxes. Are our values compromised? They've been around for a while. Do we see rampant partisanship and POV? I submit that we do not.
Userboxes are more "Wiki" than "Pedia", to be sure. What I mean is that they do not serve our encyclopaedic function-this is perfectly true. However, I believe that they serve a community building purpose--a no less valid part of the Wikipedian experience. I have tonnes of userboxes on my page. They are an integral part of my userpage. Do I seek out others with similar views? Absolutely. Just yesterday, I was touched to see how much I have in common with (and how much I differ from) User:Canadianism. But does this mean that I am going to start forming caucuses of Anglican/autistic/pacifist/NDP/pro-life/queer users? I plead that I can make my views public without allowing them to seep inappropriately into the article namespace.
That is my tuppence worth. If I have made leaps, assumptions, or false conclusions then by all means bring them to my attention. Carolynparrishfan 17:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Userboxes is plain fun. It is childish but truly human to wear labeled clothes. Still a cop will ask you to remove offensive/illegal terms or pictures showing on your shirt. No more policies needed IMhO. -- Harvestman 20:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I want to clear my point of neutral view. There are three kinds of userboxes, two of them pertaining to our goals.
I agree, it is somewhat of a waste, but there are many things that contribute little to Wikipedia. Look how many pages this has... Wikipedia:We hold these Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense to be self-evident and Wikipedia:List of really, really, really stupid article ideas that you really, really, really should not create. There are many more similar sites. Do they serve a purpose besides humor? Not really. I'd call that a greater resource waster. Gflores Talk 22:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
... does that make me a bad person? It seems to me that Wikipedia could use more tools for productive networking; ways to find peers to edit with, to keep up with what they are doing, to share new finds and favorites lists and todo lists with them. And more ways to add interest to pages while keeping them informational. If people want to divulge their personal beliefs, histories, loves, hates, and other biases, more power to them. MediaWiki doesn't currently offer much along the lines of built-in ways to gather or share such information; lashing out at users' efforts to make their own from scratch seems unnecessary and unkind. +sj + 05:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I created a new abbreviation for this policy - WP:UBP -- God of War 07:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
As the main page is being used to direct discussion, and I'm a bit of a newbie to the Right Way™ to go about this, I've drafted a user subpage. I think I hit the consensus points, but it's very fairly incomplete. I figure this will provide a focus, and everyone can discuss if they even want a page like this to exist. This'll be a discussion product, while WP:UBP remains an issue synopsis. — Daelin @ (early January)
I have a question regarding userboxes, one that I don't think has been satisfactorily answered. How are userboxes of any kind helpful or relevant to the writing of an encyclopedia? From something as general as gender to something as specific as which Star Wars bounty hunter one would shoot first, what difference does it make? Soltak | Talk 19:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, I am gleaming from what has been said on the fair use issue that people are afraid that a wholesale use of copyright images on user pages in the manner of a webpage could result. I can see that argument.
So, I would suggest that policy be amended to permit the fair use of copyrighted images in userboxes only. Any other use of copyrighted images on user pages (unless the user actually holds the copyright) should result in the usual procedures requesting that such images be removed. -- CJ Marsicano 16:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
(Yes, I realize this doesn't really apply to "POV" userboxes. I'm still working on that metaphor.) ~~ N ( t/ c) 04:24, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty indifferent to the whole attack template thing: until userspace attacks are speediable, I don't see why templates that are only used in userspace should be treated any differently. But templates, categories and images that can be used effectively for poll-stacking operations are a different matter: I endorse all uses of WP:IAR to delete these on sight until we have a speedy criterion to cover them. --- Charles Stewart 01:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
For all of those that say POV and political userboxes are divise and promote factioning of the wikipedia community, I say this. In the last few days, 4 RfCs have been made (2 approved - with Kelly Martin's having to be reconducted because the 275KB of discussion became incivil), 2 RfAr (admin misconduct and wheel waring - both undecided rejected), and 2 series of mass out-of-process deletions. It has shown a much darker side to the community ("The community is not more important than the encyclopedia... Get on with what we're here for, or sod off"), and has forced 2 people to leave (Firebug and Joe Sewell) and has contributed to others, and lead to many leaving the WikiProject. But more than that, it has destroyed all sense of trust and support of those who are empowered. User are making backups of userboxes for fear that admins will delete them. Personal Attacks are rampant and more people are likely to quit if they get dragged down with this userbox things. Deleting people's userboxes is much more harmful to the community than letting them be. People feel they have been censored and that is not what wikipedia is all about. If wikipedia wants to restore a sense of community trust it should allow everyone to have their little box so that no one feels that they are being attacked or censored. Then they can get back to writing the encyclopedia rather than arguing on this message board here.--
God of
War 06:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Are there userboxes that are personal attacks on wikipedians currently? WP:NPA is not WP:CIVIL, and both apply within the community. Userboxes are by definition bound by these two policies.
I would define userboxes as "a way for users to voluntarily classify and categorize themselves in a visibly uniform manner." As such I think that we'd do well to re-use much of the guideline specified at Wikipedia:Categorization. After all, these userboxes are technically just aesthetically pleasing representations of categories or groups of categories. Why are we reinventing the wheel here?
Userboxes should not be too broad or too narrow. It defeats their purpose (either everybody is a member of a particular category or a single person is). If a user wants to create a userbox that he believes will only be used on his userpage, he should not create a userbox template. Then if other people begin to use it themselves, a template can be subsequently created--that's one of the benefits of a wiki!
In addition, I believe that userboxes should use parameters whenever possible. For example, it makes no sense to have seperate userboxes for every time zone. A user could easily specify which timezone he wishes to display by providing an argument to the template.
Specifically--what do userboxes offer that goes beyond a uniform, visible representation of categories that would justify more than a section on Wikipedia:Categorization? Such a section would basically describe how the guidelines for categories applies to userboxes and specify a few additional caveats, such as image use. ~ MDD 46 96 00:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm a moderate user of userboxes, about 40% of which are ones I created myself for my userpage (and thus do not exist except as arguments to a "blank cheque" template). My main concern here is the potential for server overload. This page says that over 250 userboxes were created in the first three days of January. I don't frickin' care what's going on, 500 userboxes a week, every week, is going to overload the servers unnecessarily, especially when transcluded (and often by a minority of users, since I presume most of these are specialty niche ones). I say we should just make substing all but the most critical ones mandatory and solve the damn issue. If people want to factionalise so badly, stick a damn category on your userpage. Johnleemk | Talk 12:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
In the UK Incitement to racial hatred is illegal and is currently being discussed in the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. From the text of the bill
It seems to me that some userboxes are getting close to these, and hence would be illegal to be displayed in the UK. Maybe theres a need for the policy to have something related to Hate speech? -- Pfafrich 13:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia isn't a place for campaigning. It's an encyclopedia. While it may be appropriate to express one's opinions on a user page so that other users know about your editing biases, use of any part of Wikipedia to promote that point of view is never acceptable. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 04:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
:I find this line of argument persuasive and I think that we should never be critical of anything on Wikipedia. It is more trouble than it is worth. --
Daniel 04:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
God of War wrote QUOTE Sorry, but some users don't live in a police state and are allowed freedom of speech. Local laws are irrelevant except the law of florida. UNQOUTE That is a nice theory but it does not jive with the real e-world. People are in prison today, who did things on the Internet that were legal where they lived, but not legal where other people were able to access the Internet and see what their governments considered to be bad stuff. Examples:
Are you really suggesting that the people of one community/nation/state have to abide by the laws of any and all communities/nations/states? Wouldn't the laws of a censorious country such as North Korea prevent the existence of Wikipedia at all? Freddie deBoer 05:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please tell me if there is a limit to the number of userboxes on a page? An admin deleted several edits on my userpage because he said I had too many userboxes. I'm just wondering if there is some official policy on a maximum number of userboxes, and if so, could it please be put onto the relevant policy page? Thanks. -- Cyde Weys vote talk 04:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
There's a proposal to add a speedy delete criterion dealing with attack pages in the template space at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#A draft wording. Consensus on the idea and the wording is being sought. Hiding talk 19:21, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Proposed clauses written by gorgan_almighty 10:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
There appears to be a mountain of information on the general subject of user boxes here, at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, and in the talk pages of dozens of templates. The only information of interest to me is, "How do user boxes help make a better encyclopedia?" If this section were dedicated to only proponents of user-boxes explaining the answer to that question, it would allow people like me to get the heart of the matter. -- Peace Inside 19:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
We don't need userboxes to state our opinions on our user pages. You can write "I am an avid supporter of (politician X) though I oppose his party's policies on (issue Y) and I think that X did his county a great disservice through his actions with respect to Z." Indeed this says a lot more than any facile bumper sticker. The difference between writing your opinion on your user page and putting a userbox up is that the latter can easily be abused (and has been in the recent past) for the purpose of campaigning. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 12:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
As a person with an MBA, even though wiki is not-for-profit, let me tell you the same principles apply here as in business. Userboxes help users (employees) write an encyclopedia the same way Barnstars do: They make users (employees) feel good (through self-expression) and make them more likely to contribute. Happy users are productive users. Also, neophytes, like me, learn about technical things (programming syntax, how to upload images, fair use, etc.) in the course of making userboxes. I should also note that the whole userbox controversy has forced me (and I'm sure many other users)to become much more aware of wiki's rules of order, processes, etc. that I would not have otherwise. It would be an enlightened management/administrative decision to keep them. Lawyer2b 14:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this one of those when did you stop beating your wife questions? Hiding talk 20:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be little point in including a category on every user box. Templates have this nifty little "whatlinkshere" function that does exactly the same. Hence, the cats are redundant. R adiant _>|< 23:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I think this is a valid point, in that the category namesape is in general part of the encylopedia, whilst userspace is not. Perhaps whats needed is a non-encyclopedic caterory namespace (and for that matter template namespace) Something like User:Category: which would basically be the whole Wikipedians namespace. -- Salix alba 20:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
If I may squeak up? I have absolutely no answers to any of the questions raised, yet. So you might want to skip this section if you are seeoking answers.
Anyway, I wish I had the certainty that so many have! I have mostly questions, and I'm still struggling to come up with even the right questions. But I don't feel able to address this issue until I do have more answers:
But even these questions exist in a larger framework:
So why am I posting? Right. I am thinking of a place where people interested in these questions can share information, probably under the umbrella of Wikipedia:WikiProject Community. Anyone interested, message me. Herostratus 05:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Would it be an idea to run a disclaimer along the top of each user page, to the effect that any and all opinions expressed here are the opinions of the individuals in question and are not endorsed nor held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia itself? That might be one move which could solve some concernss that people might have regarding the opinions expressed there-in. Hiding talk 18:15, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
A recent addition to the "concerns about regulating userboxes" section says, "The userbox controversy has illuminated ideological splits between believers in "traditional" Wiki values, and volumes of editors much more active in talk space and projects, than in adding to the Encyclopaedia." This statement is problematic. First of all, it's not clear how this is a concern about regulating userboxes as much as a general (albeit relevant) observation about the userbox controversy and the Wikipedia community as a whole. I'm not sure it belongs in that section (although I can't see a better place for it, unless it's "Background".)
Second, although the "ideological split" referred to is undeniable, the description of the two sides strikes me as terribly biased. The reference to "traditional Wiki values" is unclear at best and incendiary at worst, and the characterization of the "volumes of editors" is unneccessarily pejorative. Is there any evidence that supporters of userboxes as a whole are more active in talk space and projects than in article space? (I'm sure there are a number of individual users to whom this characterization applies, but it seems inappropriately sweeping to me.)
It might be better to say, "The userbox controversy has illuminated an ideological split between editors (mostly, but not exclusively, new Wikipedians) who see talk space and projects as community-building exercises helpful to the encyclopedia project, and editors (mostly, but not exclusively, Wikipedians of long standing) who see them as distracting and disruptive to the overall health of the encyclopedia." But then, perhaps that's too POV to the other side. Is that wording neutral enough, or does someone have a better one? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 18:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been looking through the December database dump to see how common the use of of these boxes are. Generally they only seem to be used by a small (less than 10) number of people. Those which might raise an eyebrow include
17 {{User_atheist}} 14 {{User Drug-free}} 11 {{User_liberty}} 11 {{User atheist}}
in total there were 1642 full list. In comparison the two big hits were
34230 {{newbie}} 1208 {{User en}}
The use of these templates generally follows Zipf's law with most templates only used a few times. There were 18 with 10 links, 27 with 9, 29 with 8, 29 with 7, 57 with 5, 30 with 6, 57 with 5, 70 with 4, 102 with 3, 119 with 2 and 945 with only one link.
Note these stats are from 14 Dec 05, just before the explosion/userbox debate. I'm eagerly awaiting the next dump for comparison. If the figures above are anything to go by it seems like the penetration of userboxes is very small. -- Salix alba 21:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
[2] Developer Jamesday has requested that images only be used for content, not decoration. The reason for this is that images cause a major server load problem; the actual size of the image is not really relevant. Hence, please remove images from userbox templates, and use formatted or colored text instead. R adiant _>|< 11:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I posted some technical questions about this here: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Questions re server load from images in userspace. Might want to check that later to see if anyone replied. Herostratus 23:04, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think use of pictures in userboxes, where they're free licensed, is a problem. I have no opinion on that as yet. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 21:03, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, userboxes images appears may not be a problem, I urge all to view Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Questions re server load from images in userspace]. Herostratus 22:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Deleting all images from userboxes isnt the way to go. Userboxes with individual images look better, and help with content as they stand out to people. Whats the point of userboxes if nobody bothers to look at them? You cant just cancel out the image's removal with bright colours, because all userboxes will become bright and therefore equal. Im 100% behind removing copyright images and such, but deleting all images is just like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 19:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if you might consider...
I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.
Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.
I think rather than us having to go through a mass deletion (which is what is likely to happen if the userbox fad doesn't go away), it will be better to simply change the culture, one person at a time. Will you help me?-- Jimbo Wales 10:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Which answer would you prefer from me: "Hell, no", "Fuck, no", "Absolutely not", "Never", or just plain "No"? What happened to Wikipedia is not censored? — CJ Marsicano 16:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Thoſe who would give up Essential Liberty to purchaſe a little Temporary Safety, deſerve neither Liberty nor Safety.
If you support me and cjmarsicano's view, add {{user:Cjmarsicano/UDUIW}} to your userpage. --Sh ell 17:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Let's tone it down a bit--it isn't in the interests of the encyclopedia to alienate members of the community unnecessarily. Jimbo has asked us all, as individuals, to remove political and polemic userboxes from our userpages, in the interests of Wikipedia. Let's all stop attacking one another for disagreeing over this suggestion, and as individuals, consider it on its merits and edit our userpages accordingly.
Maybe the fad, if that is what it is, will die a natural death. Maybe it won't, in which case it may be necessary to remove the divisive ones. This wouldn't prevent those who want to have such statements on their userpages from using the "subst" command to place the statements directly on their pages. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 18:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that religious Userboxes are very useful (especially when they link to categories). For instace, if I belong to and am an expert in a very small religion, having that userbox and category may allow people who need help writing an article on the subject that I am an expert in. Perhaps it doesn't make sense to say "I'm a Democrat/Republican" since that doesn't imply any expertise in the field, but I think religious boxes may help the encyclopedia if used properly. -- ʀ6ʍɑ ʏ89 04:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, expressing one's biases and whatnot is a good thing, I agree that it does help the project. Finding someone who can, say, translate latin may also be useful (I have had occasional requests to translate latin phrases using my schoolboy latin because of the latin babelbox on my userpage). Where it becomes problematic is in linking people through their biases. It really is that simple. When Wikipedians are encouraged and enabled to link together through their propensity to come down on one or other side of an issue, then it's bad for the project. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 14:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
The boxes are so much a part of the culture and there are so many of them that eliminating the troublesome ones will be difficult. I'm certainly struck by how many seem to serve no other purpose than provocation.
As a starting point maybe add a caveat to the Wikipedia:Userboxes page: the primary purpose of user boxes and user categories should be to alert other Wikipedians to ways you might aid them in editing. For instance, if you speak speak a second language or have professional expertise in a technical field other users will know they can contact you for assistance. User boxes that are designed to provoke or offend or reflect a POV but no expertise are generally discouraged.
So, it's good if a box alerts me to the fact a user speaks Arabic or is an astrophysicist, but whether "this user prefers that the death penalty be used far more often" or "supports the legalization of all drugs for adults" is irrelevant to how I deal with them as a Wikipedian. Marskell 13:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
A wise man once said:
When I came to Wikipedia a little over a month ago, I came to check on some controversial issues with which I have become familiar. When I saw who had made some edits that seemed suspicious, I looked at their user page. I also looked at the userpages of those editors who seemed to be making the best contributions. Those who were honest about their point of view, whether with userboxes or equivalent personal statements, were much easier to understand as editors, and in my view, were more likely to edit without an agenda.
Everyone has a point of view. The only way we can hope to achieve neutrality is if we all understand each other's point of view. Userboxes make that easier. The only reason I have placed a column of userboxes on my userpage is so that other editors might understand my point of view, and so that we might together achieve a neutral point of view. Trying to pretend that every individual doesn't have a point of view is like trying to pretend that everyone doesn't have emotions, or a background.
I think you need to look again at the kind of people who use userboxes, and the kind of people you want to attract. What proportion of vandals, hoaxers, spammers, and blocked users bother to be honest about their point of view with userboxes? Please let me know if that proportion is not at least an order of magnitude below the proportion of the community as a whole.
Is there an easier way to be honest about our points of view than userboxes? Is squelching individual points of view honest? Will squeching points of view ever be able to achive neutrality in editing as well as announcing them? Why then not make it as easy and attractive as possible to make such an announcement? -- James S. 17:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I wonder how many people, considering Jimbo's request above, are most concerned about being asked to remove from their userpages some political comments that they think are illuminating and may be useful to other editors who want to know about what kind of person they are.
I think that's fine; I do find it useful to read what a user has to say about himself. I'd like to ask those people who consider Jimbo's request, but decide to reject it, if they would instead consider replacing {{User X}} on their userpages with {{subst:User X}}. This will have the effect of removing the connection with the template--deletion or editing of the template would not affect them, for instance--while retaining the statement on the userpage, and also has the benefit that you can then edit the words yourself to refine what may be a quite broad, generic statement, into one that speaks more precisely about you. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 19:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe we all agree that userboxes such as this: This user is vehemently against Jews are bad (concerning the fact that i'm Jewish).
I move to delete innapropriate ones! Wiki eZach 20:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Tony, your words have a lot of merit. I think they're reasonable, but I suspect they'd carry more weight with many of us if you and others hadn't acted in a way regarding boxes that many of us felt was unreasonable before. Talk first, THEN shoot. It is true that WP is not a democracy, and Jimbo's words carry a lot of weight with me, so when he says that something troubles him, I give it serious weight. I've done a fair bit of substing already back when this first came up and people were (in my view unjustifiably) deleting boxes, as substing protects one from those deletions. (the DOWNSIDE of subst is that you also don't pick up improvements like eliminating images from boxes) But in view of what Jimbo has said, I just now did a fair bit of disconnecting my already subst'd boxes from categories, at least for political/religious ones (I retained the category links for things like not liking edit wars, wanting to be told when I goof, and trusting Jimbo). I think userboxes are fast and easy ways to show how I feel, and I continue to believe there is merit in people knowing where I come from. But I'm starting to think they are cluttering up my page more than a more compressed scheme, or even a paragraph or two of prose would. In fact it's the computer languages that are bugging me the most! I want some compact table that shows where I fit, skillwise, on the 25+ languages I've used over the decades going back to the 1970s, rather than a big huge stack of boxes like I have now. Maybe if I am clever enough I'll think of something that doesn't require nested templates or a lot of work to maintain. But I digress. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:59, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
This is my official view on the issue. Any userbox can go. BUT, userboxes that are considered unacceptable (ex. ones that use racist statments, personal insults or degrade a certain group) would not be allowed. However, there would be a vote before they are deleted. Furthermore, there would be a set of requirements before a userbox could be nominated for deletion. --Sh ell 00:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been a strong proponent of subst'ing since day one of this dispute, and I see no reason to change this. Half of the userboxes on my user page (generally the ones unrelated to Wikipedia) have been subst'ed for a few weeks already. Johnleemk | Talk 04:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I hope everyone will consider substing their userboxes and then editing the text to make them state their opinions more accurately.
On programming languages, I don't see the problem with writing sentences about one's skills:
How on earth could I possibly state the above with userboxes, and why would I want to? -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 21:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, the point about categories being liable to misuse is well-taken, and so is the point of letting users define themselves as they wish. How about this, to completely separate unwelcome categories from displayed boxes:
Okay, how about ":Category: User kills abortionists" or ":Category: User gases Jews"? ":Template: Please vandalize (articlename)"? I'm sure I could come up with many, many more. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 05:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Herostratus, how can you justify that pornography should be speedily deleted?! Please keep in mind that Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors. For further evidence, see penis or vulva. I find it rather telling that you would support the speedy deletion of pornography but not a much more worthless and more damaging hate-speech template (see Tony's examples above). -- Cyde Weys 06:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales requested help in a voluntary campaign to eliminate polemical userboxes (see A Note from Jimbo above). He was not calling for anything to be forced on anybody. I ask, as a matter of courtesy, that everyone leave this section for discussion of Jimbo' request. Please do not bring in arguments over the wording of a userbox policy or how this campaign is a threat to your freedom, those topics are being covered adequately in the sections just above.
My user page is clean. How can I best encourage other editors to do the same? I've thought about leaving comments on user talk pages, but I suspect that would provoke an overreaction from some users. I do think Jimbo's request should be made known to users who do not have this proposed policy on their watchlists. Could we start a project? It wouldn't be a typical project, though. Any ideas? -- Dalbury( Talk) 12:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I think where I'd start to worry about such templates would be if concrete evidence appeared that they were being used to compile spamming lists in efforts to pack policy debates, much as some of the religion userboxes were used to pack deletion debates. I haven't seen such evidence, and I think they're probably harmless. I'm not counting inclusion of such templates at all in my list. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:20, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
It's firmly in the wikipolitics category of which I say above "probably harmless", yes. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk
After reading the recent discussions I decided to subst my userboxes, all of them. And I removed most of the categories, at least the ones that cause factionalisation. Also, they are hidden unless one presses the button to show them. Would it still be ok by Jimbo's statement to have these userboxes in such a case? In itself I continue to support userboxes and even the 'polemical' ones. I do agree however with the entire arguments against categorisation -- Sneltrekker† My Talk 10:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
As I've said before, I have no problem with polemical userboxes as long as the statements are further explained somewhere in the user's userspace, and these userboxes are not used to factionalise or push a particular POV. I'm ambivalent about categorisation for polemical userboxes, but am leaning against them because of the risk of factionalisation. My sole polemical userbox is my own personal creation, which I alone use and does not belong to any category. Johnleemk | Talk 10:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm reading something different in Jimbo's comment than a lot of others here. He is being polite at this point about the polarizing userboxes, but I suspect, and correct me if I am wrong, that he will enforce the deletion of such boxes if we don't agree to do so voluntarily. I support the removal of the polarizing userboxes and hope that my assumption of his message is the correct one. Much of the postings I see seem to indicate that editors are trying to find loopholes in this by decategorizing the userboxes, and by making small adjustments...I think that it is time everyone abide by Jimbo's comments and get rid of these userboxes now.-- MONGO 13:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the problem is that big. Despite its recent prominence, the userbox craze seems to be rather limited in extent. I have nearly 900 contacts, and I'm finding that only around 10% of those have political or religious userboxes. I agree that it might prove problematic to eliminate them, but deprecating them is definitely feasible. I think that most likely they'll slowly become uncool, and will never come close to becoming part of mainstream Wikipedia culture. The babelboxes, and other useful userboxes, on the other hand, will tend to be used more and more. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 11:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
The vast majority--and I mean this literally, the vast majority--of all userboxes are benign and uncontroversial. Jimbo is asking users to use their own commonsense in considering removing political and polemical (and he makes it plain that this may include religious) userboxes and asking their acquaintances to consider doing the same. Since only a small proportion of active Wikipedians (my estimate is some 10%) seem to use userboxes anyway, I think this is an appropriate way to deal with the issue. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 05:00, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Be careful whom you accuse of edit warring and move warring. Most of those that I have deleted were either listed under beliefs or religions, or were attack templates. I think you're stretching "at least in theory" too far. I don't see a problem with having fuzzy objectives in this case; take 100 people and ask them if they'll consider reviewing their userboxes and removing the more political and polemical ones, and you'll get a mix of different removals each based on personal criteria, and this is just fine with me.
Yes, I mean political and religious userboxes--a few people use, say, babel boxes. My estimate is based on examination of the userpages of active editors whose userpages or talk pages were in my watchlist because I had edited them over the past year. This evening I went through all the A's and B's. Of 42 active editors, I found just one editor with any arguably political userboxes--that was saying that he supported the UN. Earlier samplings that I did suggested a much higher takeup. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 06:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that:
I have modified my own user page to keep to the spirit, if not the letter, of Jimbo's suggestion, and encourage others to do the same. -- Angr 13:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's remotely possible to compare the two. If I put text on my userpage describing my beliefs, you have to come to my userpage, where you engage me as a person, to read it. If I plop a little template on my userpage, saying "this user subscribes to X belief", I'm making myself part of a faction within Wikipedia that, selected by belief, can be managed, rounded up, manipulated, marketed to and whatnot. Belief becomes a commodity. The problem is exacerbated if there's an associated category because these are somewhat easier to navigate than template links.
Removing the template and writing about yourself is a very liberating thing to do: you talk about yourself as a Wikipedia editor, not as a member of some group linked by having a pretty badge on their userpages. A step towards this is to subst your userboxes and edit them so that they describe you more accurately. You're not a cookie cutter member of some faction, you have your own beliefs. So why not act like it? -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 15:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
It simply isn't true that you have to come to my userpage if I have a userbox template. There are template and category links at database level and they can be accessed through the linking and category tools provided by the wiki. You can get a whole list of users by clicking a link. It's a telemarketer's dream come true.
It's one thing to know that, theoretically, some unscrupulous person might search for Catholics or anglicans or socialists by doing a google search, quite another to encourage the practise by permitting editors to encode it into the database.
Everybody gets a userpage and can write what they like on it, relevant to the encyclopedia. When they start to use template and category space in ways that hurt the project and are in no way useful to it, then it's time we asked them to consider stopping.
And thanks for stopping, by the way. One person at a time. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 16:09, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Could I suggest that you consider that you could possibly be missing the point deliberately? The problem isn't with skill-based userboxes, but those that categorise people by belief. The "perfect userpages" cat is for those who wish others to edit them to make them perfect, so if you think my userboxes, none of which are polemical or political, should be removed or substed, do so with my blessing. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 16:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Let's see. Youre making strained comparisons, you blanked your userpage, and failed to take up a good faith offer that I've had on my userpage for some time now. You're posturing and it isn't a pretty sight. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 16:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with polarization problems set by userboxes and will remove my political box. Solidusspriggan 03:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
I believe that if you do take away userboxes it won't matter because then people will just start putting the same opianian into text, and will all have been for nothing. Take a vote and if the consensus is for userboxes keep userboxes, if the consensus ia against userboxes get rid of them. but either way stop this useless debate. †Jakken† 20:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
• | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 20:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I just cannot believe the vitriolic response to Jimbo's perfectly reasonable request. I've been following this discussion for some time now, but I'm moving on. It has been a huge waste of time--I have seen very little progress in the past few weeks, and it's degraded little by little into an argument for argument's sake.
I don't have any polemical userboxes on my userpage, and I've subst'ed the ones I do have.
I'm a Wikipedian. I'm going to go improve Wikipedia. Anyone want to join me? ~ MDD 46 96 22:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Just to clarify myself here: I'd like to see this userbox issue resolved. For me, taking a step back puts things into perspective and allows me to see the other side better sometimes. I was getting somewhat frustrated, as this section's heading shows. I just hope that this will remind others to take a step back, or that it will inspire people to work harder at a policy.
Lowtax's law... you're right I suppose. Very interesting. Thanks for the laugh Avriette :) ~ MDD 46 96 06:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
This user is leaving this stupid
debate and refuses to have anything to do with
userboxes.
Wait. Ahh shit. |
JDoorj a m Talk 04:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
To every problem... - If I understand correctly, it is not so much a problem to formulate one's POV on the userpage (civicly formulated of course). Everyone has one, although not all of us state it - that is why the NPOV-argument against userboxes is weak. And it may even be helpfull for other wikipedians who may learn off it and balance it out in articles for NPOV purposes.
The real problem is that through the medium of the userboxes and categories similar-POVed users can find eachother and form a POV-power just too easily. That would make NPOV-writing almost impossible, could corrupt votings through loyalty mobilization, and might scare off other users from contibuting.
...there is a solution - I do think the approach taken now (deletionism of individual userbox after individual userbox) is not very helpfull in attaining the goals. First of all it is not in cooperation with the users who use the box, but opposed to them. That's the angry feeling behind the criticism on the TfD-page.
How should it be done? Operation Decategorizapocalyps Now! has three parts:
1. I think that de-categorization of all userboxes is the first and most important step to be taken. With implementing the de-categorization of all reli/poli-userboxes, users can keep their colorfull little visible userboxes on their page, their POV is respected, but they loose the invisible categories. De-categorization of all boxes is better explanable and convincing policy than the approach taken now. It can be implemented within a short time by a wikibot, and will lead to less resistance (since the userbox itself is not visibly changed).
2. To fully implement this de-categorization, it is necessary to replace the template-referrence {{userbox}} on the userpage with the actual wikicode. In other words, the userboxes are implemented in the userpages only. They are not back-traceble templates anymore. Without templates, there is also no "what links here"-categorization. Deleting the userbox templates after this second de-categorization step will affect not a single userpage, and will hardly lead to reactions.
3. Also, it would be civil to anounce this decategorization two weeks before implementing it. Users are warned, and this works as a cool-down period. Part of the angry responses right now is that users have to suddenly find their templates on the TdF-page and immediately come to its defence hot-headed. But explaining that the danger is not in their POV, but in the categorical bundling of all POV opposed to eachother, will be accepted.
Of course, in principle POVed people can always find similar-POVed persons and start an unwikipedian dynamic. But the degree in which it happens after de-categorization is very, very small.
(Other considerations, like 'some POVs are inherently uncivil' can still be handled independent of decategorization plan)
Does it make any sense?
-- ActiveSelective 12:22, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, if userboxes were subst:'ed, image-free, and decategorized, I'd have a lot less objections to them. I still think personally thast they should all be NPOV (express an interest in something, not an opinion on it), but this would eliminate a lot of the objections. -- nae'blis (talk) 20:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
ActiveSelective, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, you are at least the third person to suggest this on this thread alone. Rather than let there just be a fourth, fifth, etc., I'm going to suggest this as a basis for a proposal to take the next step, below. Herostratus 00:39, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I know! Lets all just disregard our opinions. They we can all go down to our local DIY shop (sorry if i offend anyone because im speaking proper, i mean "british", english as apposed to incorrect, i mean "american" english) and paint ourselves grey! Then we can pump the taste out of our food, and live like lifeless jellies. We could find ourselves saying:
Or we could just be individuals and stop taking offense like we breathe, look up "joke" every now and then. If we stop taking peoples opinion userboxes so personally, and cry ourselves to sleep over one, and instead just find it a bit interesting while scrolling through someone's user page, then we would be better off, and have little (or at least less) need to argue - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 20:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
These two users have taken some rhetorical questions and turned them into a dialog. This dialog could probably be held more productively on the talk page, and meanwhile if there is a problem with the rhetorical style of some of the project page, then this can be refactored to use less slanted forms of expression. I have reverted both edits. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 11:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I think people have made a lot of excellent comments and I'm sure many people have changed their stance over the course of discussion (I know I hae). I think that one early issue that I see as having been address is the question "should we have a policy at all". Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that consensus seems to be yes on that questions.
Therefore I would like to propose that we move on to a next step? Please discuss. Herostratus 01:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
This discussion should now be split into three separate discussions:
Please limit comments to one or two sentences, and indent with asterisk. Typical comment might be "Yes, lets move on to discuss those three questions" or "No, we need more discussion, or those are the wrong questions"
If you have more than a sentence or two or three of comment on this proposal (only), or aspects of it.
Whatever we do, we have to make sure that it's compatible with the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to function as an encyclopedia. While it's good to have a community, that community exists solely to serve the encyclopedia. I agree with Jimbo that this affair may ultimately have to be dealt with by mass deletions. It's our responsibility to try to formulate a sensible policy that will lessen the damaging effects of use of some of the templates, and thus obviate that. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Many good points have been made on this page. Unfortunatly much of this enlightened debate is not heard on the Templates for Deletion Page because userboxes are still being speedily deleted. Often this is wholly without merit as the most recent case proves: A userbox had 9 keep and 1 delete vote. Excellent points were being raised beyond the obvious knee-jerk reaction some people might have. Unfortunatly, all it took was one rogue admin to speedy delete this. It took an entire page of DRV to get this undeleted and the well-mannered debate on the TFD page was overcast by the fiery controversy on the DRV page. Because the criteria for speedy deletion is so mis-understood I propose a solution to allow fair and open debate and transparent process.
All Deletions must go through the Templates for Deletion Page.
If a userbox is so offensive that it is causing irreprable harm to wikipedia - An admin can still be allowed to blank the userbox and protect it. I see this as a much better alternative to speedy deletion. This way a debate can still go on at the TFD page and interested parties can judge for themselves whether on not this action was justified as the history will still be viewable.
I think that making sure every userbox has a fair chance on the TFD page will make for a much more peaceful wikipedia. Process is Important Some may see process as cumbersome, however it is this process that ensures transparent use of admin power and keeps tensions between Admins and users to a minimum. I hope to pass this policy quickly to ensure that wikipedia returns to its roots of people logically debating and reaching a consensus of the best thing to do.-- God of War 06:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
You cannot make a policy like that, preventing any templates from being speedily deleted, because it doesn't make sense. Pages that are attacks, copyright infringements, defamatory, etc, may need to be speedy deleted and this will continue. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:31, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
If you think administrators have abused speedy deletion, take it to dispute resolution. Don't try to make a written policy that nobody is going to follow anyway. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
We've long had a policy of speedy deleting attack pages, and just because something is a template rather than another kind of page doesn't excuse it from that policy. While I agree that in the case of most of our 5000 or so templates it would be inappropriate to speedily delete them, the controversy seems to revolve around about 100 or so political and religious templates which, Jimbo has made it very plain, have a limited future on this site, one way or another. I suepect that most of the attack templates are political or polemical in nature, so ultimately the problem will be resolved. In the meantime a policy against speedy deleting templates would be impossible to implement. Sysops will continue to delete content that has no place on Wikipedia because it is used to attack other people. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 13:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm slightly playing the devil's advocate here. It essentially seems to me that there is a huge argument going on about what is appropriate on user pages and whether categories on user pages can be used to mobilize NPOV wars on AfD and so on.
I have to ask, why have user pages at all? Very few people actually use them in ways that contribute to the WP, but rather use them as "About me" profiles (me included). Many have stated that WP is not Myspace or Livejournal, but most user pages contain little information that is more appropriate to WP than to sites such as Myspace.
User talk pages are useful for communication between WP editors, so Î can see keeping them going, but there's nobody out there who will really have their utility on WP comprimised by the removal of the actual user page. Some people use it to link to projects they feel are important or useful pages that browsing editors might want to look at, but it's not like those pages aren't easily found from the Community Portal or elsewhere.
I would have never bothered creating a user page when I created an account if not for the fact that there seemed to me to be pressure to not have your signature be a red link and if I didn't start imitating other user pages once I got more into the community. They're certainly not necessary to maintaining a good encyclopedia. If what people put on userpages creates so much controversy, why not do away with them altogether? - dharmabum ( talk) 09:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
One alternative to user pages might be to make userspace private--implementation of this in Mediawiki would be trivial. Thus each user would have a work area that he could use to keep track of what he was up to. Administrators would have full access for the purposes of checking against abuse of the wiki (for instance, using it as a private file store--this has been done with gmail and it would in fact be much easier to implement on mediawiki).
Users would still have talk pages but their use as substitutes for the userpage would be deprecated.
I don't think this would be particularly workable. Surely we'd be better off just using commonsense and getting rid of damaging features such as the political userboxes, while retaining userpages, which I think are useful and beneficial, and tolerating use of template space userboxes which are either obviously useful (babel, etc) or harmless (most joke userboxes). -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 13:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
If you read Jimbo's comments, I think you'll have to agree that inaction is not an option. It's an ultumatum, albeit a polite one. The dangers of political and religious userboxes are all too real; they have been used for organising campaigns on Wikipedia and this will only escalate as long as they exist. Moreover to borrow Jimbo's words for a moment, they most assuredly do attract the wrong kind of person and give people the wrong idea about what it means to be a Wikipedian. -- Tony Sidaway 19:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
It's a convenient place to keep frequently-referred to links and stuff. And it's a center around which I can create temp pages for articles in process. My 0.0002 cents worth. That and 52 more pennies might get you a quarter cup of coffee. -- DanielCD 22:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I found myself thinking along the same lines as dharmabum, i.e. toying with the idea of getting rid of userpages, too, since a lot of the rest of what gets written on them is as irrelevant to the project and as potentially disruptive as these silly userboxes. But on the other (and more important) hand, and besides the other reasons people have mentioned, user pages are clearly a vital part of community, and Wikipedia is (like it or not) a community. Moreover, it's inevitably a community; it can't help being a community; we can't possibly stamp down its tendency to become a community; we have to work with the fact that it is and will always be a community. See Clay Shirky's essay A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, which I am indepted to User:Lar for reminding me of.
So the challenge is to shape the community-building aspects of the system (e.g. the existence of user pages at all) while downplaying those apects which tend to divide or discourage or alienate the community. Steve Summit ( talk) 18:14, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
We need to either keep all of these or delete all of them. Saying that Jimbo is wrong because people should feel free to put their POV on user pages, while at the same time deleting POVs that you find offensive or consider an attack, is hypocritical and intolerable. Ashibaka tock 14:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
In general the ones that art being deleted are the ones that can be speedied as attacks. Ultimately they will all go, but for now the deletions that we can make stick are the more extreme personal attacks. So it's pragmatism rather than hypocrisy. Wikipedia isn't consistent. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 18:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not favorably dispsed to pettifogging legalism and neither, generally speaking, is Wikipedia. Personal attacks have no place on Wikipedia, whether in article space. template space or anywhere else.
Of course "this user is a member of Hamas" is not an attack by any stretch of the imagination, but until someone deletes such a template claiming that it is I don't see why we should address the question, any more than we should worry about people deleting the article "penguin" as a personal attack unless there is evidence that this is likely to happen--in which case it's almost certain to be an isolated problem with one administrator's interpretation of the word "attack". -- Tony Sidaway 19:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Look again Tony...user ku klux says that the user is a member of the ku klux klan. This box actually has a NPOV. If it said this users supports the KKK that would show a POV but would still be acceptable. If the user said all black people should die, then that is closer to being an attack albeit an impersonal one. There is a distinction here and it is an important one.-- God of War 19:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
In reply to DESiegal, I disagreed with the statement that the Ku Klux Klan template was an attack template, but I thought it should go anyway so I was happy to endorse the deletion. If someone speedied a Hamas userbox I would also endorse the deletion. I agree with Jimbo: all political, polemical and religious userboxes should go, and as quickly as feasible. I will endorse any and all deletions of such templates, even though I may say that the grounds for deletion chosen by a person are wrong. They're still damaging the encyclopedia and I am happy to see the back of them, whoever deletes them. -- Tony Sidaway 21:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
They all go, ultimately. Really, that will happen. But preferably voluntarily. -- Tony Sidaway 05:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
There are some valid concerns... POV zerging and personal attacks and we have policies to deal with the personal attacks.
The categories on userboxes can be used to facilitate zerging the vote process, yes. But, there are processes outside wikipedia that cannot be tracked to do the same (see free republic). By allowing categories and not shuting the valve on userbox categories it makes it much easier to see if that is what is going on and take it into account as opposed to a process you can't see. There is a benefit in leaving it, namely, you can quickly identity abusers. It is my belief that these are the EXCEPTIONS and not the rules, and we need not make the rules based solely on exceptions.
People have interests and points have been made about languages and technical abilities. But let's say you have a question on the factual validity of a claim made about Mormonism? Check who are Mormons and get their input. That's not POV pushing, that's rounding out an article. The same is true about political, religious, or personal persuasions. It identifies people who can be asked to contribute to round out an article. For instance, the George Bush page is almost wholly negative when it isn't neutral and that's a known problem. Why not ask some Republicans to contribute also. That's not pushing a POV but presenting all sides.
The fact is, people have their interests and thinking that all the editors of wikipedia can be lumped into one harmonious lot and not form cliques of sorts (and to be fair they are there without userboxes). Having groups is not a bad thing as long as civility can be maintained. -- Jbamb 16:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
If there is a list of userboxes that are "offensive", I will voluntarily remove any on such a list from my page, and discreetly mention it to others I know as well. Some of us will voluntarily comply with this. If I have missed an important chunk of discussion regarding the issue that makes this comment irrelevant or ill-informed, I apologize; It's hard to read everything. -- DanielCD 21:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo has asked us all to consider removing religious, political and polemical userboxes from our userpages, so if you go to the userbox lists and find one of your userboxes in the beliefs, politics or religion categories, then those are the ones to remove. -- Tony Sidaway 21:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
There must be order!
I believe that if Wikipedia is to succeed, compliance with all scribed protocol is necessary. The scope of an action, and the scope of its consequences, are irrelevant.
I use Babel. I haven't used userboxes yet, but I did a neat little screencapture and cut-and-paste job into a file (ubx.jpg which I can provide to anyone who wants to see it - talk to me) that describes me.
Said file is sort of like one of those very long lists of questions that circulates amongst my age group and the next one or two junior to us, but slightly less frivilous. It showed me that whether you comprehensively (or not even) describe yourself in words, userboxes, or pictures is irrelevant: a lot of info is still a lot of info.
Now I'm going to see if I can find, somewhere on this or (officially) related sites, the purpose of user pages. THE purpose. If I can't (homie it can't be done), then I suggest we find one.
Q: What's the purpose of Wikipedia? A: Blah, blah, blah. Q: Oh, good. Looks like it's on its way.
Q: What're user pages for? A: Uh... Q: You mean you don't know? Q (louder): Eh, anyone know what a user page is actually *for*? Ax, where x is various people: [...] Ao, where o is official sources: "Wak wak wak wak wak." Q (being a neophyte): "Absorb, absorb."
-- Esseye 23:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Consider Wikipedians (this includes yourself) a special operations force and Wikipedia their mission.
What differs SOF from regular troops? Primarily, their maturity. Wise up.
Something's gotta be done. What got me was what that Sarah person said - "something regulating self-expression something".
Sure, self-expression is good. Banter, cameraderie, ribbing - these are all good things, that help us feel united, contribute to morale and esprit de corps, etc etc.
However they are NOT central to (and may be counterproductive to) the MISSION. The mission is life.
They increase our capability to perform the mission. They do not positively affect the mission itself.
What is our engine for completing the mission? Wikipedia.
So. These things (that's a blanket term, encompassing ribbing, userboxes, and a whole lot else) belong off Wikipedia. They belong in emails. In phone calls. In text messages. In letters. In photographs. On non-Wikipedia pages.
User pages are user pages, yes, but they subscribe to the same xx.wikipedia.org URL as the informative parts of the site. They belong to this mission.
They are sacrificial to the mission - WE are sacrificial to the mission.
The priorities from high to low are Mission, Troops, Equipment, Self (officer). Those four things can't really be translated to Wikipediac, but you get my point. I hope.
When a Ranger says, "Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor", there's quite a lot that goes without saying. Not JUST though he be the lone survivor, but "though it means I give up a lot of things for myself".
Hit me on this one, 'kay?
-- Esseye 23:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I see what you mean. The above is intended as a non-humancentric approach. Personally I think that common sense is the only rule that should apply to userpages (that and "Don't be a dick and/or dense")...
I suggest, though, that while having a user ID system to tell who's editing what is a good thing, and some bio info, is a good thing, having big usertrees per user is an unfair use of mission resources. I haven't put a lot of thought into this vein yet because I have to meet someone for coffee downtown, but I'll get back to it.
-- Esseye 23:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Everyone needs to go read WP:USER:
What can I have on my user page?
A good start is to add a little information about yourself, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, your real name, your location, information about your areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. Obviously, this will depend on how comfortable you are with respect to privacy.
...
Another use is to let people know about your activities and opinions on Wikipedia.
...
You may include one or more Wikipedian categories, such as Category:Wikipedian musicians. Wikipedian categories are intended to help Wikipedians with similar broad interests to congregate and converse. They have some similarity to Wikiprojects, but are much less formal.
(all boldface mine)
The decisions being brought up here are already made as part of Wikipedia guidelines, and these guidelines have held up in ArbCom hearings. Bringing this issue up in regards to userboxes is an end-run around the Userspace usage guidelines.
Disliking George W. Bush is not only a personal dislike (see paragraph 1 above), but also quite obviously a broad interest on which people may congregate and converse (see paragraph 3).
Congregating around topics in order to push POV is irrelevant to user pages or userboxes, but a matter of willful user behaviour. Userboxes do not push POVs on articles, people push POVs on articles.
Disliking someone, even expressing that dislike or disagreement, is not a personal attack. Especially when that person is not even a Wikipedian.
All the problems stated about userboxes that are valid are already covered by existing policies. A number of problems listed are unsubstantiated ("numbers are rising", "images in templates are a server drain", "less justification for content in User: space that exposes Wikipedia to legal concerns than in the main namespace" (huh???) ).
Special regulation of userboxes are not needed and only increase bureaucracy in userspace.
- Keith D. Tyler ¶ 23:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, how about this. Userpage contents should be limited to material typically seen in offices, cubes, or workstations at a typical, but relatively liberal, knowledge-industry business.
In other words, if its appropriate for your cube at a software company in Boulder (Colorado, USA), then its probably OK on your userpage; if not, not. (I used a relatively liberal environment rather than (say) a white-shoe accounting firm as a model because after all it is a Wiki, not Brittanica. Non-American editors may substitute for Boulder any city which is a nexus of the type of software development company where the CEO and oldest employee is under 30).
So what might this mean?
Its not perfect. One thing you won't find in meatspace but that might be allowed here is the Deltionist or Anti-Censorship etc. banners. Another might be ethnic identifiers, which aren't really needed in meatspace.
Does this approach make sense? This could be used as a voluntary guideline or as the basis for discussion of policy. I think this is a good way to explain things to people, and I'd like to spin this off as a seperate page. Any comments? Herostratus 15:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Divisiveness WAS 4.250 18:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I've seen it said many times that not having userboxes means that we cannot "celebtrate our individualities and uniqueness." This is not true; indeed a userbox is more like a pin or badge that you put on your coat, a t-shirt slogan or a bumper-sticker. It doesn't express individuality at all; rather, it regiments and subborns individual opinion to the purpose of expressing a kind of group solidarity--which is why pins, bumper stickers and the like are so popular in political campaigning.
Jimbo has said on this subject: "As noted in other places, I do want to emphasize that I'm not opposed to people expressing their individuality! And I'm not in favor of us censoring people's userpages (except in extreme cases where the page is offensive in some specific ways of course), but rather to just gently change the culture. I think it's a very complex matter as to which categories are problematic, and I do not feel that I have standing to make a definitive judgment about it. I just hope that people will be very wary of accidentally accepting a culture of group warfare in wikipedia, where we have traditionally been so good at setting aside our differences to be good Wikipedians."
[3]
So you're an anarchist pro-life anti-smoking vegetarian with a PhD in quantity surveying and two cats? Write about it on your userpage. Write about yourself. You don't need electronic pins and bumper stickers for that. -- Tony Sidaway 17:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Is the main problem with userbox templates that people create them with a view to advertising their views on the templates pages? If so, why not massively delete templates and encourage the use of the generic userbox template?-- Chris 17:57, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
nazi | Springtime for Hitler, and Germany! Winter for Poland and France! |
This is a mess. I'm going to leave my opinion here because there seems like no structered discussion. I think POV should be allowed, but only positive POV. So "This user hates PCs" is out but not "This user loves Macs." the exception is for Wikipedia issues ("This user dislikes vandals") but "This user hates blacks" is a personal attack. Images should not be fair use, I recluctantly agree. It should not be enforced with an iron fist, however. Yes, userboxes should fit into babel templates. Other than that, live and let live.-- HereToHelp ( talk • contribs) 03:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Move to table Let's wait three months for Jimbo Wales's suggestion to work. Meanwhile, communicate with people politely and set a better community standard. Here are some suggestions:
Table this discussion for three months. Encourage moderation as an alternative to policy change.
This poll is invalid If you want to 'table' it for 3 months, then just stop talking about if yourself. You can't pass a policy compelling others to silence - or preventing others proposing new ideas. What does this mean? -- Doc ask? 21:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Although I beleive mass deletion to be a good idea, it may however aggrevate users. We would therefore need to but safegaurds in place as it is likely that vandalism would rise quickly.
I beleive deletion is good because:
I think we should delete the userboxes one by one, with the most controversial first. In that time we could also win over more users to our cause. The Neokid - Wikihalo Guiding Director talk 13:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I urge people that dislike userboxes of some form or another to monitor Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. There are many userboxes being nominated there, particularly such things as {{ User pedophile}}. violet/riga (t) 16:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Use of userboxes has been mentioned on the Administrators' Noticeboard, and I think it needs a look from everyone who watches this talk page. It's not a total solution, but it's the best I've seen yet! Ashibaka tock 03:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Some people are trying to sneak a new line of text into the criteria for speedy deletion. It says divisive or offensive userboxes can be speedily deleted. There is no consensus or talk page discussion on this, only a brewing revert war. Now Tony Sidaway has used this brand new speedy deletion criteria to try and get rid of Template:User pacifist3 which is in the middle of an active TFD. Please voice your opinion on this before some admins go on a userbox deletion rampage.-- God of War 18:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, there was nothing 'sneaky' about it. Please debate the issues and not the people. It was done openly, and appears to have the support of Jimbo. See [4], and his cautions at: [5].
I've posted the links on WP:AN to make sure this is widely known -- Doc ask? 18:23, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, Jimbo does run the place. -- Tony Sidaway 05:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
In the context of making an encyclopedia, what purpose are offensive and divisive userboxes supposed to serve? Bi 11:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
In the context of making an encyclopedia, what purpose is deleting userboxes supposed to serve? -- T-rex 15:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
If I were determining the guidelines regarding userboxes:
Your definition is inconsistent. The fact that you would give religious boxes special treatment over political boxes is in itself IMO controversial. I ought to be able to state my political opinions just as much as my religious opinions. Frankly I think that menacing bands of creationists are just as undesirable as menacing bands of Nazis. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm getting the impression that Cool Cat is against fundamentalism, rather than politics or religion per se. But let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Bi 18:23, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Why are religious userboxes allowed, but political ones not? Politics is just as, if not more, important than religion. Religion causes a lot more problems in the world than politics. If you keep one, keep the other. You cant pick and choose specifically, you have to be general in your proposed policy in terms of politics and religion both being views. I personally think all POV userboxes should be allowed, and that if you are offended by a userbox, you need to get out more and find out what the real world is like. - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 17:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I think they should all go. Every single one that expresses some canned slogan suh as "this user believes that meat is murder/every sperm is sacred" or whatever statement that might be viewed as a provocation rather than informative. How come we ended up with so many people in an encyclopedia, a work supposedly devoted to producing long strings of words, who thought it was so bad to use those techniques to write a few paragraphs about themselves, and instead needed to reach for some prefabricated, and inevitably false, words that they could pretend for a moment belonged to them. -- Tony Sidaway 04:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Why, I wonder, are we suddenly being asked/forced to do this? Do userboxes really make a damn of difference to articlespace? Is this a case of "making a better encyclopedia" by regulating the non-encyclopedic space, or is it more a case of CYA in a period of high media attention? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I now agree that the only content on a user page should be that which furthers the goal of the project. Therefore any userbox which does not further the goal of the project should be deleted. Hiding talk 20:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
The magnitude of this (ridiculous) issue has unfortunately swelled to the point where only an extreme solution is going to solve this problem. I propose threefour:
1. Eliminate all user box templates. Period. If users wish to have them on their page, they can put in the sexy, sexy raw code:
<div style="float: left; border: solid #6699ff 1px; margin: 1px;"> {| cellspacing="0" style="width: 238px; color: #3a5791; background: #FFFFFF;" | style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #6699ff; text-align: center; font-size: 14pt;" |[[Image:Jimbo at Fosdem cropped rounded.png|43px]] | style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; line-height: 1.25em;" | This user has a massive crush on '''[[Jimbo Wales|Jimbo]]'''. |}</div>
=
This user has a massive crush on Jimbo. |
Similarly, if they want the world to know about their polyglotic abilities, they can put in the English box and the Spanish box and the what have you box.
But there won't be a repository of user boxes! They won't be standardized! Userboxing (which, with a different definition, sounds like it could be fun sometimes) won't be nearly as easy!
... So what? We're not here to make little fortune-cookie-fortune-style boxes, people!! We're here to build an encyclopedia! Let's put this whole mess down, Old Yeller style, and move on with our lives!
2. Delete and enforce notability/non-notability. We set up a massive operation to decide this user box good, this user box bad. But then (as now), we start pouring hundreds of man hours into deciding whether a user box is notable/relevant/too inflammatory gaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh what a waste of wikipedia's resources!!!!
3. Ignore this entire issue. Move on. This is a surprisingly effective solution, except userboxcruft is just going to grow and grow and grow (which, incidentally, it will do under #2, as well), until, guess what! We're going to have to kill off all the user boxes because there simply won't be any room for compromising anymore.
We need a clear policy. And we need it to come down from on high, smiting all userboxes who wouldst stand in its way. The only way, really, to deal with this issue, is to go tabula rasa and let people put in the code, old-school, if they OMG CANT LIVE WIHTOUT MY USEREBXO. JDoorj a m Talk 03:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
4. We systematically de-categorize all of the user-boxes except where having a category is obviously relevant to the Wikipedia project. I'm thinking language boxes, technical proficiency boxes, and my "This user is a fan of Big Red Hockey" box. fine I can live without that one. Then, we strongly encourage/enforce by bot the substing of user boxes, to reduce server load (unless this would increase server load to do all that writing on all the pages in which case we skip that step and just strongly encourage substing).
JDoorj
a
m
Talk 03:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Many userboxes are currently being listed for deletion right after their creation, with the argument they aren't massively used. I think a userbox policy should point out this argument is only valid when nominated userbox is less then say a week old. Larix 09:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Would it be an idea to rename all templates meant for user space to something like usertemplate:(blah)? It would clarify the confusion on wether userboxes are user space or encyclopedia space. Larix 09:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
As I suggested on Jimbo's popular talk page, instead of being cheerleaders for sheer arbitrary subjectivity, that instead WP sit down and decide what POV it doesn't like and therefore won't allow in userboxen (or usercats and userspace for that matter).
For example, the box Jimbo smited, User paedophile. That would then be, presumably, an official Bad POV for WP.
This wouldn't affect articlespace as much as it would affect userspace and other administrative spaces.
It seems people are much more interested in being arbiters of what is divisive and what is polemic instead of actually determining these things in a Wikian way.
- Keith D. Tyler ¶ 00:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a conspicuously open community. It does not have nearly as many as rules, procedures, and enforcement mechanisms as large communities and societies usually have. This is a tremendously important fact.
How can we all get along as editors, and successfully collaborate on this very interesting but very hard problem of creating a high-quality NPOV encyclopedia, without all the rules and regulations that groups of humans traditionally saddle themselves with?
We have not repudiated those rules and regulations because the other groups that do adopt them are wrong for doing so. The groups that adopt them are, alas, right for doing so. The larger a community gets, the more varied its population and the more distant its members, the more inevitable it becomes that serious and unresolvable conflict will arise. That's why you need all the rules and regulations and enforcement mechanisms.
Whenever a community tries to do the egalitarian thing, to erect a more open structure without so many rules and regulations, to appeal to the best in everyone to do the right thing because they know it's best and not because of any rule forcing them to, the same thing always happens: sooner or later, big horrible conflicts arise because someone or other not only can't handle the freedom, but finds it actively necessary to challenge the system, to fling down various nonnegotiable gauntlets which defy resolution without violating one or more of the ideals which the community thought it was trying to uphold.
In the present case, we have a clash over offensive behavior, and more specifically, offensive behavior which, it can be plausibly claimed, ought to be protected free speech. But in any large community that tries to operate by consensus and good feeling rather than picayune regulations, there are two important meta-rules which everyone has to follow:
Obviously these two rules have a belt-and-braces quality to them, much like the IETF Robustness Principle. If no one ever offended, we wouldn't have to work at not being offended. If everyone worked at not being offended, no one would have to worry about offending. But, in fact, both rules are equally important. It's a two-way street; we have to meet in the middle.
Now, it's unfortunately the case that not everyone is able to work amicably within informal rule structures like these. Doing the right thing for the right reason, simply because it's the right thing and the right reason, is not something everyone can do. That's why the larger and older a community is, the more rules and enforcement mechanisms it typically has, because it's bound to have the members that cause the problems that only the rules could solve.
When we're faced with horrendous conflict stemming from various parties' inability to voluntarily get along with each other under the informal rules we've got, we really have only two choices: (1) add more formal rules which would resolve the conflict, or (2) figure out some way to get along without the parties who can't get along.
We're open to everyone, we want to tell anyone and everyone they're welcome here, we don't want to drive anyone away, but the plain fact is that some people cannot and will never be able to function reasonably in an environment as open as this one. We who remain must understand that, and must not feel too bad about seeing people leave for this reason, and must not feel too guilty about the occasional need to ask them to leave. Furthermore, out of self-preservation, we may need a few new (hopefully informal) meta-rules to ensure that the message is sent to people who can't get along that they'll probably have to find another place to play, that we can't and won't afford the time and energy required by the disruptions they insist on causing.
This isn't just a userbox issue. If we banned userboxes, certain editors would still want to find ways of making provocative personal statements, and other editors would still want to be offended by them. But it's not just a provocation/take offense issue, either. The inability to respect another person's position (which obviously prevails on both side of the provocation/offensensitivity divide) is also central to the internecine quarrels some editors can't avoid having when they grapple with POV issues in articles. We can't always afford those proliferating disruptions, either.
Up above people were worried about freedom of speech. This both is and isn't a free-speech issue. For one thing, free speech is free only as long as everyone is free to ignore it. For another thing, we obviously have no absolute right to free speech here, for I do not have the right to say "2 + 2 = 5" on the Mathematics page and insist that the statement be kept there. Finally, and most importantly, freedom of speech in a society as open as this one carries a responsibility to, well, speak responsibly.
Up above people were worried about democracy, communism, and fascism. Someone called Wikipedia a benevolent dictatorship, but I think it would be even more appropriate to call it a benevolent anarchy. We've got, collectively, more than enough freedom and power here to utterly destroy ourselves, and the reason that we do not is that we choose not to.
I encourage everyone to keep making that choice.
Steve Summit ( talk) 02:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Let me break out my favorite two graphs, to show why wikipedia is so solid at its basis:
The extremely narrow spike on the histogram is very spectacular and compelling.
Basically, most articles are not edited by most people, most of the time. This means that the community is segmented, and most large conflicts are just never going to start. (The same might not be true of the project namespace. I'm hoping to get that histo'ed too :-) ) Kim Bruning 10:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Quadell's Proposal: Userboxes should tell what you know, not what your POV is.
Very few of us are pro-userbox or anti-userbox, really. I think there is a clear consensus that {{ user pedophile}} does no good and much harm to Wikipedia, and that {{ user de}} does no harm and much good. In between is a lot of confusion, and it's sometimes difficult to sort out what's helpful and what's harmful. But in the end, I think that has to be the guiding principle: is this userbox helpful or harmful to Wikipedia? The question is not whether I would like to express myself this way – self-expression is all good and well, but Wikipedia is not designed as a forum for this. As well all know, it's an encyclopedia.
So I propose that userboxes (defined as templates or categories used in user space) be allowed and even encouraged if they tell what you know, but discouraged or even disallowed if they tell what you believe or what your POV is. We should all be free to express our beliefs and PsOV on our userpages, but not in templates or categories, as that causes more trouble than it's worth.
For example, if I want to know more about Catholicism, or I'm looking for people who know a lot about Catholicism to help write an article or settle a dispute, then it would help to have a {{ user Catholicism-3}} userbox and Category:User Catholicism-3. These would help me find experts or interested people. This is very similar to Babelboxes, and it would be helpful in writing an encyclopedia. But I shouldn't care whether the person is pro- or anti-Catholic. If I do care about the person's POV, it's probably not for the purposes of improving Wikipedia. Userboxes should not make it easy to find people who agree with you; they should make it easy to find people who know a lot about a topic.
If we look at userboxes through that lens, it's pretty clear that {{ User:UBX/Theism}} and {{ user atheist}} aren't useful - but {{ user existence of God-3}} would be, in that it would indicate that you are an expert in theological arguments for or against the existence of God. That's useful in writing an encyclopedia.
Note that on my userpage I have what superficially look like userboxes. But they don't use templates and they don't use categories, so these shouldn't really be troublesome for anyone. They can't be used for factionalism any more than the phrase "I am a vegetarian" could.
To summarize, in my opinion userboxes should be free to tell what you know. But if you want to express your beliefs and PsOV, you can do so - so long as you don't use templates or categories. Comments? – Quadell ( talk) ( bounties) 13:57, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Truly, JDoorj a m Talk 19:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Please consider my proposal, Wikipedia:Unacceptable userspace material, which is intended as a means to minimally quantify "bad" materials in userspace which the practice of including on userpages has a detrimental effect on Wikipedia, as opposed to making overbroad blanket restrictions. The goal is to maintain the liberal use of userspace while addressing concerns of divisiveness and objectionableness, avoiding template deletionism, and providing a defined standard on which compulsory userpage amendments can be based. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 21:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Today I took the opportunity of an interview on IRC, organised by The Signpost, to ask Jimbo about userboxes:
I think that puts it pretty plainly. It's not just that he doesn't personally like userboxes, but speaking as the leader of the project he finds the current situation unacceptable. Something must change, one way or the other. -- Tony Sidaway 05:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
And here's what he said on the official English Wikipedia mailing list. I don't know why, but a lot of otherwise clued up Wikipedians don't subscribe to that, which is a shame because they often end up wondering what's happening when a big change comes along.
(Excerpted)
Full version at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-February/039853.html
-- Tony Sidaway 06:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Presuming we do enact some policy on "good" versus "bad" userboxes, it occurred to me that it will be important to give people lots of help in deciding which is which. I think one way of focusing the distinction is to notice that the userboxes we're worried about, the divisive and polemical ones, all carry a second, not-so-hidden message:
Ask yourself: are you actually stating a salient fact, or are you wearing something on your sleeve?
Ask yourself honestly: will anyone be offended by the statement in this userbox?
Ask yourself even more honestly: are you secretly hoping that they will?
If you expect that someone is likely to be offended, and if your excuse is "but it's their fault for being so closeminded", that might not be a good enough reason. Perhaps they are closeminded, and perhaps it would be a good thing if they could be taught otherwise, but it's not clear that their minds will automatically open in response to statements which mostly seem to taunt their opposing beliefs. In any case, it is clear that Wikipedia is not the place for this education to take place. It would be much, much better not to put this potentially-offensive statement on your Wikipedia user page. Put it on your personal home page, and put a link to your personal home page on your Wikipedia user page, and people who are interested enough in you to follow that link can then learn everything you want them to.
Steve Summit (
talk) 17:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
So it all cancels out. And we should all forget about this stupid debate and get on with our lives and stop pussyfooting and wasting everybody's time.-- Greasysteve13 06:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I think it would help de-escalate tensions to avoid implying that people are pro-userbox or anti-userbox. It's like being pro-category or anti-category. Very few people object to babelboxes, and very few people would (I think) object to a box saying "This user knows a lot about ancient Rome". What many people are against is expressing your biases in a way that encourages factionalism. No one objects to expressing POV on userpages. No one (or almost no one) objects to expressing POV in pastel boxes with cute images, if that's what you choose to do. Many of us, however, do object to using templates and/or categories to express POV, for a number of reasons that have been detailed all over this talk page.
People who think of themselves as "pro-userbox" will be more likely to object to statements that sound like they're "anti-userbox", and vice versa. It avoids bad feelings, and it's more accurate, to say something like the following:
"I don't object to userboxes per se, and I don't object to people expressing themselves on their userpages. I just object to using templates and categories to express a POV. Templates weren't designed for this. Templates were designed to make text easy to copy, and that's not helpful with POVs. (Shouldn't your beliefs be your own anyway?) And categories make it easy to group similar articles together, but when you group people together by POV, that leads to problems. So I think templates and categories should not be used this way. That doesn't make me anti-userbox; just anti-factionalism."
This is much more effective than saying "Userboxes are bad. Delete them all." – Quadell ( talk) ( bounties) 14:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Has the Wikimedia foundation, board, or legal representative made a citable decision regarding the use of fair use images on userboxes?
I don't think the issue itself is one for discussion/consensus. It's a legal matter, and beyond the abilities of non-lawyers to state for certainty. So, I'm looking for a statement by some authoritative person/group. -- Durin 21:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
As long as it was not offending or illegal, we have always allowed users much freedom in their userspace and user page. Why should we treat userboxes differently? This discussion is wasting valuable time of many editors, time that should go towards improving Wiki, not having to defend parts of their userpages. If somebody feels they deserve a few boxes for their trouble, and want to share it with others - great, that will raise their morale and make them more dedicated to Wiki. By fighting the boxes, we are alienating various users and damaging our community. I am strongly opposed to SD of userboxes, and any limits on their use that go further then Wikipedia:User page policy.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:36, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I would suggest copyright images do not qualify as fair use when used in user boxes, and so there should be a policy against the use of such images in this way. Hiding talk 13:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest the opposite of what Mr. Block suggests. Fair use includes social commentary and satire/parody, either or both of which userboxes practice, depending on the userbox in question. To suggest that they aren't would definitely be a violation of WP:BEANS. -- CJ Marsicano 22:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Or at least not a seperate policy. What is allowed on a userpage should not be banned from userboxes (except for things like WP:AMT that apply to all templates for technical reasons) and conversely what is allowed in a userbox should not be something that would not be allowed on a userpages. Hence the logical thing to do is not to create a seperate policy just for userboxes, but to add a section on templates on userpages in general to WP:UP and promote it to policy if need be. WP:UP already says that if the comunity ask you to take down something you have on your userpage you should comply, so it's not like it is a complete free for all zone. WP:FU, WP:NPA, WP:NOT and WP:CIVIL all still apply and should be enforced regardles of wether the offending content is in a userbox or not. I would encourage the userbox project to try and make some checks on the creation of new templates though. Templates that only interest one or two people should be made by substring the userbox template rather than creating yet another template page to do the job. "One shot" templates should as aways be substed and deleted, or at least "userified".
On a slightly related issue I think Wikipedia:User categorisation and Wikipedia:Wikiproject userboxes should be merged or at least cooperate closesly to "police" the creation of new categories and templates for userpages. Much like Wikipedia:Wikiproject stub sorting works for stub templates and categories today. People who detest that kind of beurocracy could still be free to create and subst one shot boxes based on the "meta" userbox template, but creation of new categories and template pages should idealy go though some kind of aproval at the relevant project(s) first. -- Sherool (talk) 15:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I think the last thing we need to create more policies and more restrictions; all I think we should do is clarify the current policies and decide how far they apply to userpage spaces. Eightball 19:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Proponents of this policy fear that userboxes will lead to Wikipedians with similar POVs networking and uniting for common agendas.
My primary problem with this argument is its verifiability.
Put it this way. Imagine things had happened the other way around. Imagine we had never had userboxes and were now debating whether they should be permitted for the first time. We would have to deal with speculative questions like this. If we have userboxes, will our NPOV and encyclopaedic nature be compromised?
But we have had userboxes for some time. We don't need to speculate; we need only look around. We have userboxes. Are our values compromised? They've been around for a while. Do we see rampant partisanship and POV? I submit that we do not.
Userboxes are more "Wiki" than "Pedia", to be sure. What I mean is that they do not serve our encyclopaedic function-this is perfectly true. However, I believe that they serve a community building purpose--a no less valid part of the Wikipedian experience. I have tonnes of userboxes on my page. They are an integral part of my userpage. Do I seek out others with similar views? Absolutely. Just yesterday, I was touched to see how much I have in common with (and how much I differ from) User:Canadianism. But does this mean that I am going to start forming caucuses of Anglican/autistic/pacifist/NDP/pro-life/queer users? I plead that I can make my views public without allowing them to seep inappropriately into the article namespace.
That is my tuppence worth. If I have made leaps, assumptions, or false conclusions then by all means bring them to my attention. Carolynparrishfan 17:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Userboxes is plain fun. It is childish but truly human to wear labeled clothes. Still a cop will ask you to remove offensive/illegal terms or pictures showing on your shirt. No more policies needed IMhO. -- Harvestman 20:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I want to clear my point of neutral view. There are three kinds of userboxes, two of them pertaining to our goals.
I agree, it is somewhat of a waste, but there are many things that contribute little to Wikipedia. Look how many pages this has... Wikipedia:We hold these Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense to be self-evident and Wikipedia:List of really, really, really stupid article ideas that you really, really, really should not create. There are many more similar sites. Do they serve a purpose besides humor? Not really. I'd call that a greater resource waster. Gflores Talk 22:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
... does that make me a bad person? It seems to me that Wikipedia could use more tools for productive networking; ways to find peers to edit with, to keep up with what they are doing, to share new finds and favorites lists and todo lists with them. And more ways to add interest to pages while keeping them informational. If people want to divulge their personal beliefs, histories, loves, hates, and other biases, more power to them. MediaWiki doesn't currently offer much along the lines of built-in ways to gather or share such information; lashing out at users' efforts to make their own from scratch seems unnecessary and unkind. +sj + 05:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I created a new abbreviation for this policy - WP:UBP -- God of War 07:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
As the main page is being used to direct discussion, and I'm a bit of a newbie to the Right Way™ to go about this, I've drafted a user subpage. I think I hit the consensus points, but it's very fairly incomplete. I figure this will provide a focus, and everyone can discuss if they even want a page like this to exist. This'll be a discussion product, while WP:UBP remains an issue synopsis. — Daelin @ (early January)
I have a question regarding userboxes, one that I don't think has been satisfactorily answered. How are userboxes of any kind helpful or relevant to the writing of an encyclopedia? From something as general as gender to something as specific as which Star Wars bounty hunter one would shoot first, what difference does it make? Soltak | Talk 19:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, I am gleaming from what has been said on the fair use issue that people are afraid that a wholesale use of copyright images on user pages in the manner of a webpage could result. I can see that argument.
So, I would suggest that policy be amended to permit the fair use of copyrighted images in userboxes only. Any other use of copyrighted images on user pages (unless the user actually holds the copyright) should result in the usual procedures requesting that such images be removed. -- CJ Marsicano 16:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
(Yes, I realize this doesn't really apply to "POV" userboxes. I'm still working on that metaphor.) ~~ N ( t/ c) 04:24, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty indifferent to the whole attack template thing: until userspace attacks are speediable, I don't see why templates that are only used in userspace should be treated any differently. But templates, categories and images that can be used effectively for poll-stacking operations are a different matter: I endorse all uses of WP:IAR to delete these on sight until we have a speedy criterion to cover them. --- Charles Stewart 01:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
For all of those that say POV and political userboxes are divise and promote factioning of the wikipedia community, I say this. In the last few days, 4 RfCs have been made (2 approved - with Kelly Martin's having to be reconducted because the 275KB of discussion became incivil), 2 RfAr (admin misconduct and wheel waring - both undecided rejected), and 2 series of mass out-of-process deletions. It has shown a much darker side to the community ("The community is not more important than the encyclopedia... Get on with what we're here for, or sod off"), and has forced 2 people to leave (Firebug and Joe Sewell) and has contributed to others, and lead to many leaving the WikiProject. But more than that, it has destroyed all sense of trust and support of those who are empowered. User are making backups of userboxes for fear that admins will delete them. Personal Attacks are rampant and more people are likely to quit if they get dragged down with this userbox things. Deleting people's userboxes is much more harmful to the community than letting them be. People feel they have been censored and that is not what wikipedia is all about. If wikipedia wants to restore a sense of community trust it should allow everyone to have their little box so that no one feels that they are being attacked or censored. Then they can get back to writing the encyclopedia rather than arguing on this message board here.--
God of
War 06:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Are there userboxes that are personal attacks on wikipedians currently? WP:NPA is not WP:CIVIL, and both apply within the community. Userboxes are by definition bound by these two policies.
I would define userboxes as "a way for users to voluntarily classify and categorize themselves in a visibly uniform manner." As such I think that we'd do well to re-use much of the guideline specified at Wikipedia:Categorization. After all, these userboxes are technically just aesthetically pleasing representations of categories or groups of categories. Why are we reinventing the wheel here?
Userboxes should not be too broad or too narrow. It defeats their purpose (either everybody is a member of a particular category or a single person is). If a user wants to create a userbox that he believes will only be used on his userpage, he should not create a userbox template. Then if other people begin to use it themselves, a template can be subsequently created--that's one of the benefits of a wiki!
In addition, I believe that userboxes should use parameters whenever possible. For example, it makes no sense to have seperate userboxes for every time zone. A user could easily specify which timezone he wishes to display by providing an argument to the template.
Specifically--what do userboxes offer that goes beyond a uniform, visible representation of categories that would justify more than a section on Wikipedia:Categorization? Such a section would basically describe how the guidelines for categories applies to userboxes and specify a few additional caveats, such as image use. ~ MDD 46 96 00:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm a moderate user of userboxes, about 40% of which are ones I created myself for my userpage (and thus do not exist except as arguments to a "blank cheque" template). My main concern here is the potential for server overload. This page says that over 250 userboxes were created in the first three days of January. I don't frickin' care what's going on, 500 userboxes a week, every week, is going to overload the servers unnecessarily, especially when transcluded (and often by a minority of users, since I presume most of these are specialty niche ones). I say we should just make substing all but the most critical ones mandatory and solve the damn issue. If people want to factionalise so badly, stick a damn category on your userpage. Johnleemk | Talk 12:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
In the UK Incitement to racial hatred is illegal and is currently being discussed in the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. From the text of the bill
It seems to me that some userboxes are getting close to these, and hence would be illegal to be displayed in the UK. Maybe theres a need for the policy to have something related to Hate speech? -- Pfafrich 13:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia isn't a place for campaigning. It's an encyclopedia. While it may be appropriate to express one's opinions on a user page so that other users know about your editing biases, use of any part of Wikipedia to promote that point of view is never acceptable. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 04:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
:I find this line of argument persuasive and I think that we should never be critical of anything on Wikipedia. It is more trouble than it is worth. --
Daniel 04:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
God of War wrote QUOTE Sorry, but some users don't live in a police state and are allowed freedom of speech. Local laws are irrelevant except the law of florida. UNQOUTE That is a nice theory but it does not jive with the real e-world. People are in prison today, who did things on the Internet that were legal where they lived, but not legal where other people were able to access the Internet and see what their governments considered to be bad stuff. Examples:
Are you really suggesting that the people of one community/nation/state have to abide by the laws of any and all communities/nations/states? Wouldn't the laws of a censorious country such as North Korea prevent the existence of Wikipedia at all? Freddie deBoer 05:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please tell me if there is a limit to the number of userboxes on a page? An admin deleted several edits on my userpage because he said I had too many userboxes. I'm just wondering if there is some official policy on a maximum number of userboxes, and if so, could it please be put onto the relevant policy page? Thanks. -- Cyde Weys vote talk 04:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
There's a proposal to add a speedy delete criterion dealing with attack pages in the template space at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#A draft wording. Consensus on the idea and the wording is being sought. Hiding talk 19:21, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Proposed clauses written by gorgan_almighty 10:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
There appears to be a mountain of information on the general subject of user boxes here, at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, and in the talk pages of dozens of templates. The only information of interest to me is, "How do user boxes help make a better encyclopedia?" If this section were dedicated to only proponents of user-boxes explaining the answer to that question, it would allow people like me to get the heart of the matter. -- Peace Inside 19:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
We don't need userboxes to state our opinions on our user pages. You can write "I am an avid supporter of (politician X) though I oppose his party's policies on (issue Y) and I think that X did his county a great disservice through his actions with respect to Z." Indeed this says a lot more than any facile bumper sticker. The difference between writing your opinion on your user page and putting a userbox up is that the latter can easily be abused (and has been in the recent past) for the purpose of campaigning. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 12:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
As a person with an MBA, even though wiki is not-for-profit, let me tell you the same principles apply here as in business. Userboxes help users (employees) write an encyclopedia the same way Barnstars do: They make users (employees) feel good (through self-expression) and make them more likely to contribute. Happy users are productive users. Also, neophytes, like me, learn about technical things (programming syntax, how to upload images, fair use, etc.) in the course of making userboxes. I should also note that the whole userbox controversy has forced me (and I'm sure many other users)to become much more aware of wiki's rules of order, processes, etc. that I would not have otherwise. It would be an enlightened management/administrative decision to keep them. Lawyer2b 14:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this one of those when did you stop beating your wife questions? Hiding talk 20:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be little point in including a category on every user box. Templates have this nifty little "whatlinkshere" function that does exactly the same. Hence, the cats are redundant. R adiant _>|< 23:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I think this is a valid point, in that the category namesape is in general part of the encylopedia, whilst userspace is not. Perhaps whats needed is a non-encyclopedic caterory namespace (and for that matter template namespace) Something like User:Category: which would basically be the whole Wikipedians namespace. -- Salix alba 20:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
If I may squeak up? I have absolutely no answers to any of the questions raised, yet. So you might want to skip this section if you are seeoking answers.
Anyway, I wish I had the certainty that so many have! I have mostly questions, and I'm still struggling to come up with even the right questions. But I don't feel able to address this issue until I do have more answers:
But even these questions exist in a larger framework:
So why am I posting? Right. I am thinking of a place where people interested in these questions can share information, probably under the umbrella of Wikipedia:WikiProject Community. Anyone interested, message me. Herostratus 05:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Would it be an idea to run a disclaimer along the top of each user page, to the effect that any and all opinions expressed here are the opinions of the individuals in question and are not endorsed nor held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia itself? That might be one move which could solve some concernss that people might have regarding the opinions expressed there-in. Hiding talk 18:15, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
A recent addition to the "concerns about regulating userboxes" section says, "The userbox controversy has illuminated ideological splits between believers in "traditional" Wiki values, and volumes of editors much more active in talk space and projects, than in adding to the Encyclopaedia." This statement is problematic. First of all, it's not clear how this is a concern about regulating userboxes as much as a general (albeit relevant) observation about the userbox controversy and the Wikipedia community as a whole. I'm not sure it belongs in that section (although I can't see a better place for it, unless it's "Background".)
Second, although the "ideological split" referred to is undeniable, the description of the two sides strikes me as terribly biased. The reference to "traditional Wiki values" is unclear at best and incendiary at worst, and the characterization of the "volumes of editors" is unneccessarily pejorative. Is there any evidence that supporters of userboxes as a whole are more active in talk space and projects than in article space? (I'm sure there are a number of individual users to whom this characterization applies, but it seems inappropriately sweeping to me.)
It might be better to say, "The userbox controversy has illuminated an ideological split between editors (mostly, but not exclusively, new Wikipedians) who see talk space and projects as community-building exercises helpful to the encyclopedia project, and editors (mostly, but not exclusively, Wikipedians of long standing) who see them as distracting and disruptive to the overall health of the encyclopedia." But then, perhaps that's too POV to the other side. Is that wording neutral enough, or does someone have a better one? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 18:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been looking through the December database dump to see how common the use of of these boxes are. Generally they only seem to be used by a small (less than 10) number of people. Those which might raise an eyebrow include
17 {{User_atheist}} 14 {{User Drug-free}} 11 {{User_liberty}} 11 {{User atheist}}
in total there were 1642 full list. In comparison the two big hits were
34230 {{newbie}} 1208 {{User en}}
The use of these templates generally follows Zipf's law with most templates only used a few times. There were 18 with 10 links, 27 with 9, 29 with 8, 29 with 7, 57 with 5, 30 with 6, 57 with 5, 70 with 4, 102 with 3, 119 with 2 and 945 with only one link.
Note these stats are from 14 Dec 05, just before the explosion/userbox debate. I'm eagerly awaiting the next dump for comparison. If the figures above are anything to go by it seems like the penetration of userboxes is very small. -- Salix alba 21:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
[2] Developer Jamesday has requested that images only be used for content, not decoration. The reason for this is that images cause a major server load problem; the actual size of the image is not really relevant. Hence, please remove images from userbox templates, and use formatted or colored text instead. R adiant _>|< 11:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I posted some technical questions about this here: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Questions re server load from images in userspace. Might want to check that later to see if anyone replied. Herostratus 23:04, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think use of pictures in userboxes, where they're free licensed, is a problem. I have no opinion on that as yet. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 21:03, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, userboxes images appears may not be a problem, I urge all to view Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Questions re server load from images in userspace]. Herostratus 22:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Deleting all images from userboxes isnt the way to go. Userboxes with individual images look better, and help with content as they stand out to people. Whats the point of userboxes if nobody bothers to look at them? You cant just cancel out the image's removal with bright colours, because all userboxes will become bright and therefore equal. Im 100% behind removing copyright images and such, but deleting all images is just like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 19:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if you might consider...
I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.
Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.
I think rather than us having to go through a mass deletion (which is what is likely to happen if the userbox fad doesn't go away), it will be better to simply change the culture, one person at a time. Will you help me?-- Jimbo Wales 10:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Which answer would you prefer from me: "Hell, no", "Fuck, no", "Absolutely not", "Never", or just plain "No"? What happened to Wikipedia is not censored? — CJ Marsicano 16:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Thoſe who would give up Essential Liberty to purchaſe a little Temporary Safety, deſerve neither Liberty nor Safety.
If you support me and cjmarsicano's view, add {{user:Cjmarsicano/UDUIW}} to your userpage. --Sh ell 17:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Let's tone it down a bit--it isn't in the interests of the encyclopedia to alienate members of the community unnecessarily. Jimbo has asked us all, as individuals, to remove political and polemic userboxes from our userpages, in the interests of Wikipedia. Let's all stop attacking one another for disagreeing over this suggestion, and as individuals, consider it on its merits and edit our userpages accordingly.
Maybe the fad, if that is what it is, will die a natural death. Maybe it won't, in which case it may be necessary to remove the divisive ones. This wouldn't prevent those who want to have such statements on their userpages from using the "subst" command to place the statements directly on their pages. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 18:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that religious Userboxes are very useful (especially when they link to categories). For instace, if I belong to and am an expert in a very small religion, having that userbox and category may allow people who need help writing an article on the subject that I am an expert in. Perhaps it doesn't make sense to say "I'm a Democrat/Republican" since that doesn't imply any expertise in the field, but I think religious boxes may help the encyclopedia if used properly. -- ʀ6ʍɑ ʏ89 04:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, expressing one's biases and whatnot is a good thing, I agree that it does help the project. Finding someone who can, say, translate latin may also be useful (I have had occasional requests to translate latin phrases using my schoolboy latin because of the latin babelbox on my userpage). Where it becomes problematic is in linking people through their biases. It really is that simple. When Wikipedians are encouraged and enabled to link together through their propensity to come down on one or other side of an issue, then it's bad for the project. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 14:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
The boxes are so much a part of the culture and there are so many of them that eliminating the troublesome ones will be difficult. I'm certainly struck by how many seem to serve no other purpose than provocation.
As a starting point maybe add a caveat to the Wikipedia:Userboxes page: the primary purpose of user boxes and user categories should be to alert other Wikipedians to ways you might aid them in editing. For instance, if you speak speak a second language or have professional expertise in a technical field other users will know they can contact you for assistance. User boxes that are designed to provoke or offend or reflect a POV but no expertise are generally discouraged.
So, it's good if a box alerts me to the fact a user speaks Arabic or is an astrophysicist, but whether "this user prefers that the death penalty be used far more often" or "supports the legalization of all drugs for adults" is irrelevant to how I deal with them as a Wikipedian. Marskell 13:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
A wise man once said:
When I came to Wikipedia a little over a month ago, I came to check on some controversial issues with which I have become familiar. When I saw who had made some edits that seemed suspicious, I looked at their user page. I also looked at the userpages of those editors who seemed to be making the best contributions. Those who were honest about their point of view, whether with userboxes or equivalent personal statements, were much easier to understand as editors, and in my view, were more likely to edit without an agenda.
Everyone has a point of view. The only way we can hope to achieve neutrality is if we all understand each other's point of view. Userboxes make that easier. The only reason I have placed a column of userboxes on my userpage is so that other editors might understand my point of view, and so that we might together achieve a neutral point of view. Trying to pretend that every individual doesn't have a point of view is like trying to pretend that everyone doesn't have emotions, or a background.
I think you need to look again at the kind of people who use userboxes, and the kind of people you want to attract. What proportion of vandals, hoaxers, spammers, and blocked users bother to be honest about their point of view with userboxes? Please let me know if that proportion is not at least an order of magnitude below the proportion of the community as a whole.
Is there an easier way to be honest about our points of view than userboxes? Is squelching individual points of view honest? Will squeching points of view ever be able to achive neutrality in editing as well as announcing them? Why then not make it as easy and attractive as possible to make such an announcement? -- James S. 17:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I wonder how many people, considering Jimbo's request above, are most concerned about being asked to remove from their userpages some political comments that they think are illuminating and may be useful to other editors who want to know about what kind of person they are.
I think that's fine; I do find it useful to read what a user has to say about himself. I'd like to ask those people who consider Jimbo's request, but decide to reject it, if they would instead consider replacing {{User X}} on their userpages with {{subst:User X}}. This will have the effect of removing the connection with the template--deletion or editing of the template would not affect them, for instance--while retaining the statement on the userpage, and also has the benefit that you can then edit the words yourself to refine what may be a quite broad, generic statement, into one that speaks more precisely about you. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 19:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe we all agree that userboxes such as this: This user is vehemently against Jews are bad (concerning the fact that i'm Jewish).
I move to delete innapropriate ones! Wiki eZach 20:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Tony, your words have a lot of merit. I think they're reasonable, but I suspect they'd carry more weight with many of us if you and others hadn't acted in a way regarding boxes that many of us felt was unreasonable before. Talk first, THEN shoot. It is true that WP is not a democracy, and Jimbo's words carry a lot of weight with me, so when he says that something troubles him, I give it serious weight. I've done a fair bit of substing already back when this first came up and people were (in my view unjustifiably) deleting boxes, as substing protects one from those deletions. (the DOWNSIDE of subst is that you also don't pick up improvements like eliminating images from boxes) But in view of what Jimbo has said, I just now did a fair bit of disconnecting my already subst'd boxes from categories, at least for political/religious ones (I retained the category links for things like not liking edit wars, wanting to be told when I goof, and trusting Jimbo). I think userboxes are fast and easy ways to show how I feel, and I continue to believe there is merit in people knowing where I come from. But I'm starting to think they are cluttering up my page more than a more compressed scheme, or even a paragraph or two of prose would. In fact it's the computer languages that are bugging me the most! I want some compact table that shows where I fit, skillwise, on the 25+ languages I've used over the decades going back to the 1970s, rather than a big huge stack of boxes like I have now. Maybe if I am clever enough I'll think of something that doesn't require nested templates or a lot of work to maintain. But I digress. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:59, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
This is my official view on the issue. Any userbox can go. BUT, userboxes that are considered unacceptable (ex. ones that use racist statments, personal insults or degrade a certain group) would not be allowed. However, there would be a vote before they are deleted. Furthermore, there would be a set of requirements before a userbox could be nominated for deletion. --Sh ell 00:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been a strong proponent of subst'ing since day one of this dispute, and I see no reason to change this. Half of the userboxes on my user page (generally the ones unrelated to Wikipedia) have been subst'ed for a few weeks already. Johnleemk | Talk 04:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I hope everyone will consider substing their userboxes and then editing the text to make them state their opinions more accurately.
On programming languages, I don't see the problem with writing sentences about one's skills:
How on earth could I possibly state the above with userboxes, and why would I want to? -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 21:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, the point about categories being liable to misuse is well-taken, and so is the point of letting users define themselves as they wish. How about this, to completely separate unwelcome categories from displayed boxes:
Okay, how about ":Category: User kills abortionists" or ":Category: User gases Jews"? ":Template: Please vandalize (articlename)"? I'm sure I could come up with many, many more. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 05:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Herostratus, how can you justify that pornography should be speedily deleted?! Please keep in mind that Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors. For further evidence, see penis or vulva. I find it rather telling that you would support the speedy deletion of pornography but not a much more worthless and more damaging hate-speech template (see Tony's examples above). -- Cyde Weys 06:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales requested help in a voluntary campaign to eliminate polemical userboxes (see A Note from Jimbo above). He was not calling for anything to be forced on anybody. I ask, as a matter of courtesy, that everyone leave this section for discussion of Jimbo' request. Please do not bring in arguments over the wording of a userbox policy or how this campaign is a threat to your freedom, those topics are being covered adequately in the sections just above.
My user page is clean. How can I best encourage other editors to do the same? I've thought about leaving comments on user talk pages, but I suspect that would provoke an overreaction from some users. I do think Jimbo's request should be made known to users who do not have this proposed policy on their watchlists. Could we start a project? It wouldn't be a typical project, though. Any ideas? -- Dalbury( Talk) 12:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I think where I'd start to worry about such templates would be if concrete evidence appeared that they were being used to compile spamming lists in efforts to pack policy debates, much as some of the religion userboxes were used to pack deletion debates. I haven't seen such evidence, and I think they're probably harmless. I'm not counting inclusion of such templates at all in my list. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:20, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
It's firmly in the wikipolitics category of which I say above "probably harmless", yes. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk
After reading the recent discussions I decided to subst my userboxes, all of them. And I removed most of the categories, at least the ones that cause factionalisation. Also, they are hidden unless one presses the button to show them. Would it still be ok by Jimbo's statement to have these userboxes in such a case? In itself I continue to support userboxes and even the 'polemical' ones. I do agree however with the entire arguments against categorisation -- Sneltrekker† My Talk 10:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
As I've said before, I have no problem with polemical userboxes as long as the statements are further explained somewhere in the user's userspace, and these userboxes are not used to factionalise or push a particular POV. I'm ambivalent about categorisation for polemical userboxes, but am leaning against them because of the risk of factionalisation. My sole polemical userbox is my own personal creation, which I alone use and does not belong to any category. Johnleemk | Talk 10:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm reading something different in Jimbo's comment than a lot of others here. He is being polite at this point about the polarizing userboxes, but I suspect, and correct me if I am wrong, that he will enforce the deletion of such boxes if we don't agree to do so voluntarily. I support the removal of the polarizing userboxes and hope that my assumption of his message is the correct one. Much of the postings I see seem to indicate that editors are trying to find loopholes in this by decategorizing the userboxes, and by making small adjustments...I think that it is time everyone abide by Jimbo's comments and get rid of these userboxes now.-- MONGO 13:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the problem is that big. Despite its recent prominence, the userbox craze seems to be rather limited in extent. I have nearly 900 contacts, and I'm finding that only around 10% of those have political or religious userboxes. I agree that it might prove problematic to eliminate them, but deprecating them is definitely feasible. I think that most likely they'll slowly become uncool, and will never come close to becoming part of mainstream Wikipedia culture. The babelboxes, and other useful userboxes, on the other hand, will tend to be used more and more. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 11:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
The vast majority--and I mean this literally, the vast majority--of all userboxes are benign and uncontroversial. Jimbo is asking users to use their own commonsense in considering removing political and polemical (and he makes it plain that this may include religious) userboxes and asking their acquaintances to consider doing the same. Since only a small proportion of active Wikipedians (my estimate is some 10%) seem to use userboxes anyway, I think this is an appropriate way to deal with the issue. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 05:00, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Be careful whom you accuse of edit warring and move warring. Most of those that I have deleted were either listed under beliefs or religions, or were attack templates. I think you're stretching "at least in theory" too far. I don't see a problem with having fuzzy objectives in this case; take 100 people and ask them if they'll consider reviewing their userboxes and removing the more political and polemical ones, and you'll get a mix of different removals each based on personal criteria, and this is just fine with me.
Yes, I mean political and religious userboxes--a few people use, say, babel boxes. My estimate is based on examination of the userpages of active editors whose userpages or talk pages were in my watchlist because I had edited them over the past year. This evening I went through all the A's and B's. Of 42 active editors, I found just one editor with any arguably political userboxes--that was saying that he supported the UN. Earlier samplings that I did suggested a much higher takeup. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 06:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that:
I have modified my own user page to keep to the spirit, if not the letter, of Jimbo's suggestion, and encourage others to do the same. -- Angr 13:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's remotely possible to compare the two. If I put text on my userpage describing my beliefs, you have to come to my userpage, where you engage me as a person, to read it. If I plop a little template on my userpage, saying "this user subscribes to X belief", I'm making myself part of a faction within Wikipedia that, selected by belief, can be managed, rounded up, manipulated, marketed to and whatnot. Belief becomes a commodity. The problem is exacerbated if there's an associated category because these are somewhat easier to navigate than template links.
Removing the template and writing about yourself is a very liberating thing to do: you talk about yourself as a Wikipedia editor, not as a member of some group linked by having a pretty badge on their userpages. A step towards this is to subst your userboxes and edit them so that they describe you more accurately. You're not a cookie cutter member of some faction, you have your own beliefs. So why not act like it? -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 15:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
It simply isn't true that you have to come to my userpage if I have a userbox template. There are template and category links at database level and they can be accessed through the linking and category tools provided by the wiki. You can get a whole list of users by clicking a link. It's a telemarketer's dream come true.
It's one thing to know that, theoretically, some unscrupulous person might search for Catholics or anglicans or socialists by doing a google search, quite another to encourage the practise by permitting editors to encode it into the database.
Everybody gets a userpage and can write what they like on it, relevant to the encyclopedia. When they start to use template and category space in ways that hurt the project and are in no way useful to it, then it's time we asked them to consider stopping.
And thanks for stopping, by the way. One person at a time. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 16:09, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Could I suggest that you consider that you could possibly be missing the point deliberately? The problem isn't with skill-based userboxes, but those that categorise people by belief. The "perfect userpages" cat is for those who wish others to edit them to make them perfect, so if you think my userboxes, none of which are polemical or political, should be removed or substed, do so with my blessing. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 16:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Let's see. Youre making strained comparisons, you blanked your userpage, and failed to take up a good faith offer that I've had on my userpage for some time now. You're posturing and it isn't a pretty sight. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 16:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with polarization problems set by userboxes and will remove my political box. Solidusspriggan 03:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
I believe that if you do take away userboxes it won't matter because then people will just start putting the same opianian into text, and will all have been for nothing. Take a vote and if the consensus is for userboxes keep userboxes, if the consensus ia against userboxes get rid of them. but either way stop this useless debate. †Jakken† 20:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
• | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 20:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I just cannot believe the vitriolic response to Jimbo's perfectly reasonable request. I've been following this discussion for some time now, but I'm moving on. It has been a huge waste of time--I have seen very little progress in the past few weeks, and it's degraded little by little into an argument for argument's sake.
I don't have any polemical userboxes on my userpage, and I've subst'ed the ones I do have.
I'm a Wikipedian. I'm going to go improve Wikipedia. Anyone want to join me? ~ MDD 46 96 22:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Just to clarify myself here: I'd like to see this userbox issue resolved. For me, taking a step back puts things into perspective and allows me to see the other side better sometimes. I was getting somewhat frustrated, as this section's heading shows. I just hope that this will remind others to take a step back, or that it will inspire people to work harder at a policy.
Lowtax's law... you're right I suppose. Very interesting. Thanks for the laugh Avriette :) ~ MDD 46 96 06:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
This user is leaving this stupid
debate and refuses to have anything to do with
userboxes.
Wait. Ahh shit. |
JDoorj a m Talk 04:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
To every problem... - If I understand correctly, it is not so much a problem to formulate one's POV on the userpage (civicly formulated of course). Everyone has one, although not all of us state it - that is why the NPOV-argument against userboxes is weak. And it may even be helpfull for other wikipedians who may learn off it and balance it out in articles for NPOV purposes.
The real problem is that through the medium of the userboxes and categories similar-POVed users can find eachother and form a POV-power just too easily. That would make NPOV-writing almost impossible, could corrupt votings through loyalty mobilization, and might scare off other users from contibuting.
...there is a solution - I do think the approach taken now (deletionism of individual userbox after individual userbox) is not very helpfull in attaining the goals. First of all it is not in cooperation with the users who use the box, but opposed to them. That's the angry feeling behind the criticism on the TfD-page.
How should it be done? Operation Decategorizapocalyps Now! has three parts:
1. I think that de-categorization of all userboxes is the first and most important step to be taken. With implementing the de-categorization of all reli/poli-userboxes, users can keep their colorfull little visible userboxes on their page, their POV is respected, but they loose the invisible categories. De-categorization of all boxes is better explanable and convincing policy than the approach taken now. It can be implemented within a short time by a wikibot, and will lead to less resistance (since the userbox itself is not visibly changed).
2. To fully implement this de-categorization, it is necessary to replace the template-referrence {{userbox}} on the userpage with the actual wikicode. In other words, the userboxes are implemented in the userpages only. They are not back-traceble templates anymore. Without templates, there is also no "what links here"-categorization. Deleting the userbox templates after this second de-categorization step will affect not a single userpage, and will hardly lead to reactions.
3. Also, it would be civil to anounce this decategorization two weeks before implementing it. Users are warned, and this works as a cool-down period. Part of the angry responses right now is that users have to suddenly find their templates on the TdF-page and immediately come to its defence hot-headed. But explaining that the danger is not in their POV, but in the categorical bundling of all POV opposed to eachother, will be accepted.
Of course, in principle POVed people can always find similar-POVed persons and start an unwikipedian dynamic. But the degree in which it happens after de-categorization is very, very small.
(Other considerations, like 'some POVs are inherently uncivil' can still be handled independent of decategorization plan)
Does it make any sense?
-- ActiveSelective 12:22, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, if userboxes were subst:'ed, image-free, and decategorized, I'd have a lot less objections to them. I still think personally thast they should all be NPOV (express an interest in something, not an opinion on it), but this would eliminate a lot of the objections. -- nae'blis (talk) 20:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
ActiveSelective, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, you are at least the third person to suggest this on this thread alone. Rather than let there just be a fourth, fifth, etc., I'm going to suggest this as a basis for a proposal to take the next step, below. Herostratus 00:39, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I know! Lets all just disregard our opinions. They we can all go down to our local DIY shop (sorry if i offend anyone because im speaking proper, i mean "british", english as apposed to incorrect, i mean "american" english) and paint ourselves grey! Then we can pump the taste out of our food, and live like lifeless jellies. We could find ourselves saying:
Or we could just be individuals and stop taking offense like we breathe, look up "joke" every now and then. If we stop taking peoples opinion userboxes so personally, and cry ourselves to sleep over one, and instead just find it a bit interesting while scrolling through someone's user page, then we would be better off, and have little (or at least less) need to argue - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 20:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
These two users have taken some rhetorical questions and turned them into a dialog. This dialog could probably be held more productively on the talk page, and meanwhile if there is a problem with the rhetorical style of some of the project page, then this can be refactored to use less slanted forms of expression. I have reverted both edits. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 11:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I think people have made a lot of excellent comments and I'm sure many people have changed their stance over the course of discussion (I know I hae). I think that one early issue that I see as having been address is the question "should we have a policy at all". Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that consensus seems to be yes on that questions.
Therefore I would like to propose that we move on to a next step? Please discuss. Herostratus 01:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
This discussion should now be split into three separate discussions:
Please limit comments to one or two sentences, and indent with asterisk. Typical comment might be "Yes, lets move on to discuss those three questions" or "No, we need more discussion, or those are the wrong questions"
If you have more than a sentence or two or three of comment on this proposal (only), or aspects of it.
Whatever we do, we have to make sure that it's compatible with the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to function as an encyclopedia. While it's good to have a community, that community exists solely to serve the encyclopedia. I agree with Jimbo that this affair may ultimately have to be dealt with by mass deletions. It's our responsibility to try to formulate a sensible policy that will lessen the damaging effects of use of some of the templates, and thus obviate that. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Many good points have been made on this page. Unfortunatly much of this enlightened debate is not heard on the Templates for Deletion Page because userboxes are still being speedily deleted. Often this is wholly without merit as the most recent case proves: A userbox had 9 keep and 1 delete vote. Excellent points were being raised beyond the obvious knee-jerk reaction some people might have. Unfortunatly, all it took was one rogue admin to speedy delete this. It took an entire page of DRV to get this undeleted and the well-mannered debate on the TFD page was overcast by the fiery controversy on the DRV page. Because the criteria for speedy deletion is so mis-understood I propose a solution to allow fair and open debate and transparent process.
All Deletions must go through the Templates for Deletion Page.
If a userbox is so offensive that it is causing irreprable harm to wikipedia - An admin can still be allowed to blank the userbox and protect it. I see this as a much better alternative to speedy deletion. This way a debate can still go on at the TFD page and interested parties can judge for themselves whether on not this action was justified as the history will still be viewable.
I think that making sure every userbox has a fair chance on the TFD page will make for a much more peaceful wikipedia. Process is Important Some may see process as cumbersome, however it is this process that ensures transparent use of admin power and keeps tensions between Admins and users to a minimum. I hope to pass this policy quickly to ensure that wikipedia returns to its roots of people logically debating and reaching a consensus of the best thing to do.-- God of War 06:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
You cannot make a policy like that, preventing any templates from being speedily deleted, because it doesn't make sense. Pages that are attacks, copyright infringements, defamatory, etc, may need to be speedy deleted and this will continue. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:31, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
If you think administrators have abused speedy deletion, take it to dispute resolution. Don't try to make a written policy that nobody is going to follow anyway. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 07:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
We've long had a policy of speedy deleting attack pages, and just because something is a template rather than another kind of page doesn't excuse it from that policy. While I agree that in the case of most of our 5000 or so templates it would be inappropriate to speedily delete them, the controversy seems to revolve around about 100 or so political and religious templates which, Jimbo has made it very plain, have a limited future on this site, one way or another. I suepect that most of the attack templates are political or polemical in nature, so ultimately the problem will be resolved. In the meantime a policy against speedy deleting templates would be impossible to implement. Sysops will continue to delete content that has no place on Wikipedia because it is used to attack other people. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 13:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm slightly playing the devil's advocate here. It essentially seems to me that there is a huge argument going on about what is appropriate on user pages and whether categories on user pages can be used to mobilize NPOV wars on AfD and so on.
I have to ask, why have user pages at all? Very few people actually use them in ways that contribute to the WP, but rather use them as "About me" profiles (me included). Many have stated that WP is not Myspace or Livejournal, but most user pages contain little information that is more appropriate to WP than to sites such as Myspace.
User talk pages are useful for communication between WP editors, so Î can see keeping them going, but there's nobody out there who will really have their utility on WP comprimised by the removal of the actual user page. Some people use it to link to projects they feel are important or useful pages that browsing editors might want to look at, but it's not like those pages aren't easily found from the Community Portal or elsewhere.
I would have never bothered creating a user page when I created an account if not for the fact that there seemed to me to be pressure to not have your signature be a red link and if I didn't start imitating other user pages once I got more into the community. They're certainly not necessary to maintaining a good encyclopedia. If what people put on userpages creates so much controversy, why not do away with them altogether? - dharmabum ( talk) 09:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
One alternative to user pages might be to make userspace private--implementation of this in Mediawiki would be trivial. Thus each user would have a work area that he could use to keep track of what he was up to. Administrators would have full access for the purposes of checking against abuse of the wiki (for instance, using it as a private file store--this has been done with gmail and it would in fact be much easier to implement on mediawiki).
Users would still have talk pages but their use as substitutes for the userpage would be deprecated.
I don't think this would be particularly workable. Surely we'd be better off just using commonsense and getting rid of damaging features such as the political userboxes, while retaining userpages, which I think are useful and beneficial, and tolerating use of template space userboxes which are either obviously useful (babel, etc) or harmless (most joke userboxes). -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 13:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
If you read Jimbo's comments, I think you'll have to agree that inaction is not an option. It's an ultumatum, albeit a polite one. The dangers of political and religious userboxes are all too real; they have been used for organising campaigns on Wikipedia and this will only escalate as long as they exist. Moreover to borrow Jimbo's words for a moment, they most assuredly do attract the wrong kind of person and give people the wrong idea about what it means to be a Wikipedian. -- Tony Sidaway 19:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
It's a convenient place to keep frequently-referred to links and stuff. And it's a center around which I can create temp pages for articles in process. My 0.0002 cents worth. That and 52 more pennies might get you a quarter cup of coffee. -- DanielCD 22:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I found myself thinking along the same lines as dharmabum, i.e. toying with the idea of getting rid of userpages, too, since a lot of the rest of what gets written on them is as irrelevant to the project and as potentially disruptive as these silly userboxes. But on the other (and more important) hand, and besides the other reasons people have mentioned, user pages are clearly a vital part of community, and Wikipedia is (like it or not) a community. Moreover, it's inevitably a community; it can't help being a community; we can't possibly stamp down its tendency to become a community; we have to work with the fact that it is and will always be a community. See Clay Shirky's essay A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, which I am indepted to User:Lar for reminding me of.
So the challenge is to shape the community-building aspects of the system (e.g. the existence of user pages at all) while downplaying those apects which tend to divide or discourage or alienate the community. Steve Summit ( talk) 18:14, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
We need to either keep all of these or delete all of them. Saying that Jimbo is wrong because people should feel free to put their POV on user pages, while at the same time deleting POVs that you find offensive or consider an attack, is hypocritical and intolerable. Ashibaka tock 14:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
In general the ones that art being deleted are the ones that can be speedied as attacks. Ultimately they will all go, but for now the deletions that we can make stick are the more extreme personal attacks. So it's pragmatism rather than hypocrisy. Wikipedia isn't consistent. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 18:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not favorably dispsed to pettifogging legalism and neither, generally speaking, is Wikipedia. Personal attacks have no place on Wikipedia, whether in article space. template space or anywhere else.
Of course "this user is a member of Hamas" is not an attack by any stretch of the imagination, but until someone deletes such a template claiming that it is I don't see why we should address the question, any more than we should worry about people deleting the article "penguin" as a personal attack unless there is evidence that this is likely to happen--in which case it's almost certain to be an isolated problem with one administrator's interpretation of the word "attack". -- Tony Sidaway 19:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Look again Tony...user ku klux says that the user is a member of the ku klux klan. This box actually has a NPOV. If it said this users supports the KKK that would show a POV but would still be acceptable. If the user said all black people should die, then that is closer to being an attack albeit an impersonal one. There is a distinction here and it is an important one.-- God of War 19:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
In reply to DESiegal, I disagreed with the statement that the Ku Klux Klan template was an attack template, but I thought it should go anyway so I was happy to endorse the deletion. If someone speedied a Hamas userbox I would also endorse the deletion. I agree with Jimbo: all political, polemical and religious userboxes should go, and as quickly as feasible. I will endorse any and all deletions of such templates, even though I may say that the grounds for deletion chosen by a person are wrong. They're still damaging the encyclopedia and I am happy to see the back of them, whoever deletes them. -- Tony Sidaway 21:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
They all go, ultimately. Really, that will happen. But preferably voluntarily. -- Tony Sidaway 05:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
There are some valid concerns... POV zerging and personal attacks and we have policies to deal with the personal attacks.
The categories on userboxes can be used to facilitate zerging the vote process, yes. But, there are processes outside wikipedia that cannot be tracked to do the same (see free republic). By allowing categories and not shuting the valve on userbox categories it makes it much easier to see if that is what is going on and take it into account as opposed to a process you can't see. There is a benefit in leaving it, namely, you can quickly identity abusers. It is my belief that these are the EXCEPTIONS and not the rules, and we need not make the rules based solely on exceptions.
People have interests and points have been made about languages and technical abilities. But let's say you have a question on the factual validity of a claim made about Mormonism? Check who are Mormons and get their input. That's not POV pushing, that's rounding out an article. The same is true about political, religious, or personal persuasions. It identifies people who can be asked to contribute to round out an article. For instance, the George Bush page is almost wholly negative when it isn't neutral and that's a known problem. Why not ask some Republicans to contribute also. That's not pushing a POV but presenting all sides.
The fact is, people have their interests and thinking that all the editors of wikipedia can be lumped into one harmonious lot and not form cliques of sorts (and to be fair they are there without userboxes). Having groups is not a bad thing as long as civility can be maintained. -- Jbamb 16:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
If there is a list of userboxes that are "offensive", I will voluntarily remove any on such a list from my page, and discreetly mention it to others I know as well. Some of us will voluntarily comply with this. If I have missed an important chunk of discussion regarding the issue that makes this comment irrelevant or ill-informed, I apologize; It's hard to read everything. -- DanielCD 21:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo has asked us all to consider removing religious, political and polemical userboxes from our userpages, so if you go to the userbox lists and find one of your userboxes in the beliefs, politics or religion categories, then those are the ones to remove. -- Tony Sidaway 21:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
There must be order!
I believe that if Wikipedia is to succeed, compliance with all scribed protocol is necessary. The scope of an action, and the scope of its consequences, are irrelevant.
I use Babel. I haven't used userboxes yet, but I did a neat little screencapture and cut-and-paste job into a file (ubx.jpg which I can provide to anyone who wants to see it - talk to me) that describes me.
Said file is sort of like one of those very long lists of questions that circulates amongst my age group and the next one or two junior to us, but slightly less frivilous. It showed me that whether you comprehensively (or not even) describe yourself in words, userboxes, or pictures is irrelevant: a lot of info is still a lot of info.
Now I'm going to see if I can find, somewhere on this or (officially) related sites, the purpose of user pages. THE purpose. If I can't (homie it can't be done), then I suggest we find one.
Q: What's the purpose of Wikipedia? A: Blah, blah, blah. Q: Oh, good. Looks like it's on its way.
Q: What're user pages for? A: Uh... Q: You mean you don't know? Q (louder): Eh, anyone know what a user page is actually *for*? Ax, where x is various people: [...] Ao, where o is official sources: "Wak wak wak wak wak." Q (being a neophyte): "Absorb, absorb."
-- Esseye 23:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Consider Wikipedians (this includes yourself) a special operations force and Wikipedia their mission.
What differs SOF from regular troops? Primarily, their maturity. Wise up.
Something's gotta be done. What got me was what that Sarah person said - "something regulating self-expression something".
Sure, self-expression is good. Banter, cameraderie, ribbing - these are all good things, that help us feel united, contribute to morale and esprit de corps, etc etc.
However they are NOT central to (and may be counterproductive to) the MISSION. The mission is life.
They increase our capability to perform the mission. They do not positively affect the mission itself.
What is our engine for completing the mission? Wikipedia.
So. These things (that's a blanket term, encompassing ribbing, userboxes, and a whole lot else) belong off Wikipedia. They belong in emails. In phone calls. In text messages. In letters. In photographs. On non-Wikipedia pages.
User pages are user pages, yes, but they subscribe to the same xx.wikipedia.org URL as the informative parts of the site. They belong to this mission.
They are sacrificial to the mission - WE are sacrificial to the mission.
The priorities from high to low are Mission, Troops, Equipment, Self (officer). Those four things can't really be translated to Wikipediac, but you get my point. I hope.
When a Ranger says, "Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor", there's quite a lot that goes without saying. Not JUST though he be the lone survivor, but "though it means I give up a lot of things for myself".
Hit me on this one, 'kay?
-- Esseye 23:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I see what you mean. The above is intended as a non-humancentric approach. Personally I think that common sense is the only rule that should apply to userpages (that and "Don't be a dick and/or dense")...
I suggest, though, that while having a user ID system to tell who's editing what is a good thing, and some bio info, is a good thing, having big usertrees per user is an unfair use of mission resources. I haven't put a lot of thought into this vein yet because I have to meet someone for coffee downtown, but I'll get back to it.
-- Esseye 23:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Everyone needs to go read WP:USER:
What can I have on my user page?
A good start is to add a little information about yourself, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, your real name, your location, information about your areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. Obviously, this will depend on how comfortable you are with respect to privacy.
...
Another use is to let people know about your activities and opinions on Wikipedia.
...
You may include one or more Wikipedian categories, such as Category:Wikipedian musicians. Wikipedian categories are intended to help Wikipedians with similar broad interests to congregate and converse. They have some similarity to Wikiprojects, but are much less formal.
(all boldface mine)
The decisions being brought up here are already made as part of Wikipedia guidelines, and these guidelines have held up in ArbCom hearings. Bringing this issue up in regards to userboxes is an end-run around the Userspace usage guidelines.
Disliking George W. Bush is not only a personal dislike (see paragraph 1 above), but also quite obviously a broad interest on which people may congregate and converse (see paragraph 3).
Congregating around topics in order to push POV is irrelevant to user pages or userboxes, but a matter of willful user behaviour. Userboxes do not push POVs on articles, people push POVs on articles.
Disliking someone, even expressing that dislike or disagreement, is not a personal attack. Especially when that person is not even a Wikipedian.
All the problems stated about userboxes that are valid are already covered by existing policies. A number of problems listed are unsubstantiated ("numbers are rising", "images in templates are a server drain", "less justification for content in User: space that exposes Wikipedia to legal concerns than in the main namespace" (huh???) ).
Special regulation of userboxes are not needed and only increase bureaucracy in userspace.
- Keith D. Tyler ¶ 23:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, how about this. Userpage contents should be limited to material typically seen in offices, cubes, or workstations at a typical, but relatively liberal, knowledge-industry business.
In other words, if its appropriate for your cube at a software company in Boulder (Colorado, USA), then its probably OK on your userpage; if not, not. (I used a relatively liberal environment rather than (say) a white-shoe accounting firm as a model because after all it is a Wiki, not Brittanica. Non-American editors may substitute for Boulder any city which is a nexus of the type of software development company where the CEO and oldest employee is under 30).
So what might this mean?
Its not perfect. One thing you won't find in meatspace but that might be allowed here is the Deltionist or Anti-Censorship etc. banners. Another might be ethnic identifiers, which aren't really needed in meatspace.
Does this approach make sense? This could be used as a voluntary guideline or as the basis for discussion of policy. I think this is a good way to explain things to people, and I'd like to spin this off as a seperate page. Any comments? Herostratus 15:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Divisiveness WAS 4.250 18:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I've seen it said many times that not having userboxes means that we cannot "celebtrate our individualities and uniqueness." This is not true; indeed a userbox is more like a pin or badge that you put on your coat, a t-shirt slogan or a bumper-sticker. It doesn't express individuality at all; rather, it regiments and subborns individual opinion to the purpose of expressing a kind of group solidarity--which is why pins, bumper stickers and the like are so popular in political campaigning.
Jimbo has said on this subject: "As noted in other places, I do want to emphasize that I'm not opposed to people expressing their individuality! And I'm not in favor of us censoring people's userpages (except in extreme cases where the page is offensive in some specific ways of course), but rather to just gently change the culture. I think it's a very complex matter as to which categories are problematic, and I do not feel that I have standing to make a definitive judgment about it. I just hope that people will be very wary of accidentally accepting a culture of group warfare in wikipedia, where we have traditionally been so good at setting aside our differences to be good Wikipedians."
[3]
So you're an anarchist pro-life anti-smoking vegetarian with a PhD in quantity surveying and two cats? Write about it on your userpage. Write about yourself. You don't need electronic pins and bumper stickers for that. -- Tony Sidaway 17:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Is the main problem with userbox templates that people create them with a view to advertising their views on the templates pages? If so, why not massively delete templates and encourage the use of the generic userbox template?-- Chris 17:57, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
nazi | Springtime for Hitler, and Germany! Winter for Poland and France! |
This is a mess. I'm going to leave my opinion here because there seems like no structered discussion. I think POV should be allowed, but only positive POV. So "This user hates PCs" is out but not "This user loves Macs." the exception is for Wikipedia issues ("This user dislikes vandals") but "This user hates blacks" is a personal attack. Images should not be fair use, I recluctantly agree. It should not be enforced with an iron fist, however. Yes, userboxes should fit into babel templates. Other than that, live and let live.-- HereToHelp ( talk • contribs) 03:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Move to table Let's wait three months for Jimbo Wales's suggestion to work. Meanwhile, communicate with people politely and set a better community standard. Here are some suggestions:
Table this discussion for three months. Encourage moderation as an alternative to policy change.
This poll is invalid If you want to 'table' it for 3 months, then just stop talking about if yourself. You can't pass a policy compelling others to silence - or preventing others proposing new ideas. What does this mean? -- Doc ask? 21:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Although I beleive mass deletion to be a good idea, it may however aggrevate users. We would therefore need to but safegaurds in place as it is likely that vandalism would rise quickly.
I beleive deletion is good because:
I think we should delete the userboxes one by one, with the most controversial first. In that time we could also win over more users to our cause. The Neokid - Wikihalo Guiding Director talk 13:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I urge people that dislike userboxes of some form or another to monitor Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. There are many userboxes being nominated there, particularly such things as {{ User pedophile}}. violet/riga (t) 16:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Use of userboxes has been mentioned on the Administrators' Noticeboard, and I think it needs a look from everyone who watches this talk page. It's not a total solution, but it's the best I've seen yet! Ashibaka tock 03:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Some people are trying to sneak a new line of text into the criteria for speedy deletion. It says divisive or offensive userboxes can be speedily deleted. There is no consensus or talk page discussion on this, only a brewing revert war. Now Tony Sidaway has used this brand new speedy deletion criteria to try and get rid of Template:User pacifist3 which is in the middle of an active TFD. Please voice your opinion on this before some admins go on a userbox deletion rampage.-- God of War 18:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, there was nothing 'sneaky' about it. Please debate the issues and not the people. It was done openly, and appears to have the support of Jimbo. See [4], and his cautions at: [5].
I've posted the links on WP:AN to make sure this is widely known -- Doc ask? 18:23, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, Jimbo does run the place. -- Tony Sidaway 05:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
In the context of making an encyclopedia, what purpose are offensive and divisive userboxes supposed to serve? Bi 11:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
In the context of making an encyclopedia, what purpose is deleting userboxes supposed to serve? -- T-rex 15:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
If I were determining the guidelines regarding userboxes:
Your definition is inconsistent. The fact that you would give religious boxes special treatment over political boxes is in itself IMO controversial. I ought to be able to state my political opinions just as much as my religious opinions. Frankly I think that menacing bands of creationists are just as undesirable as menacing bands of Nazis. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm getting the impression that Cool Cat is against fundamentalism, rather than politics or religion per se. But let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Bi 18:23, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Why are religious userboxes allowed, but political ones not? Politics is just as, if not more, important than religion. Religion causes a lot more problems in the world than politics. If you keep one, keep the other. You cant pick and choose specifically, you have to be general in your proposed policy in terms of politics and religion both being views. I personally think all POV userboxes should be allowed, and that if you are offended by a userbox, you need to get out more and find out what the real world is like. - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • T | C 17:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I think they should all go. Every single one that expresses some canned slogan suh as "this user believes that meat is murder/every sperm is sacred" or whatever statement that might be viewed as a provocation rather than informative. How come we ended up with so many people in an encyclopedia, a work supposedly devoted to producing long strings of words, who thought it was so bad to use those techniques to write a few paragraphs about themselves, and instead needed to reach for some prefabricated, and inevitably false, words that they could pretend for a moment belonged to them. -- Tony Sidaway 04:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Why, I wonder, are we suddenly being asked/forced to do this? Do userboxes really make a damn of difference to articlespace? Is this a case of "making a better encyclopedia" by regulating the non-encyclopedic space, or is it more a case of CYA in a period of high media attention? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I now agree that the only content on a user page should be that which furthers the goal of the project. Therefore any userbox which does not further the goal of the project should be deleted. Hiding talk 20:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
The magnitude of this (ridiculous) issue has unfortunately swelled to the point where only an extreme solution is going to solve this problem. I propose threefour:
1. Eliminate all user box templates. Period. If users wish to have them on their page, they can put in the sexy, sexy raw code:
<div style="float: left; border: solid #6699ff 1px; margin: 1px;"> {| cellspacing="0" style="width: 238px; color: #3a5791; background: #FFFFFF;" | style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #6699ff; text-align: center; font-size: 14pt;" |[[Image:Jimbo at Fosdem cropped rounded.png|43px]] | style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; line-height: 1.25em;" | This user has a massive crush on '''[[Jimbo Wales|Jimbo]]'''. |}</div>
=
This user has a massive crush on Jimbo. |
Similarly, if they want the world to know about their polyglotic abilities, they can put in the English box and the Spanish box and the what have you box.
But there won't be a repository of user boxes! They won't be standardized! Userboxing (which, with a different definition, sounds like it could be fun sometimes) won't be nearly as easy!
... So what? We're not here to make little fortune-cookie-fortune-style boxes, people!! We're here to build an encyclopedia! Let's put this whole mess down, Old Yeller style, and move on with our lives!
2. Delete and enforce notability/non-notability. We set up a massive operation to decide this user box good, this user box bad. But then (as now), we start pouring hundreds of man hours into deciding whether a user box is notable/relevant/too inflammatory gaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh what a waste of wikipedia's resources!!!!
3. Ignore this entire issue. Move on. This is a surprisingly effective solution, except userboxcruft is just going to grow and grow and grow (which, incidentally, it will do under #2, as well), until, guess what! We're going to have to kill off all the user boxes because there simply won't be any room for compromising anymore.
We need a clear policy. And we need it to come down from on high, smiting all userboxes who wouldst stand in its way. The only way, really, to deal with this issue, is to go tabula rasa and let people put in the code, old-school, if they OMG CANT LIVE WIHTOUT MY USEREBXO. JDoorj a m Talk 03:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
4. We systematically de-categorize all of the user-boxes except where having a category is obviously relevant to the Wikipedia project. I'm thinking language boxes, technical proficiency boxes, and my "This user is a fan of Big Red Hockey" box. fine I can live without that one. Then, we strongly encourage/enforce by bot the substing of user boxes, to reduce server load (unless this would increase server load to do all that writing on all the pages in which case we skip that step and just strongly encourage substing).
JDoorj
a
m
Talk 03:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Many userboxes are currently being listed for deletion right after their creation, with the argument they aren't massively used. I think a userbox policy should point out this argument is only valid when nominated userbox is less then say a week old. Larix 09:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Would it be an idea to rename all templates meant for user space to something like usertemplate:(blah)? It would clarify the confusion on wether userboxes are user space or encyclopedia space. Larix 09:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
As I suggested on Jimbo's popular talk page, instead of being cheerleaders for sheer arbitrary subjectivity, that instead WP sit down and decide what POV it doesn't like and therefore won't allow in userboxen (or usercats and userspace for that matter).
For example, the box Jimbo smited, User paedophile. That would then be, presumably, an official Bad POV for WP.
This wouldn't affect articlespace as much as it would affect userspace and other administrative spaces.
It seems people are much more interested in being arbiters of what is divisive and what is polemic instead of actually determining these things in a Wikian way.
- Keith D. Tyler ¶ 00:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a conspicuously open community. It does not have nearly as many as rules, procedures, and enforcement mechanisms as large communities and societies usually have. This is a tremendously important fact.
How can we all get along as editors, and successfully collaborate on this very interesting but very hard problem of creating a high-quality NPOV encyclopedia, without all the rules and regulations that groups of humans traditionally saddle themselves with?
We have not repudiated those rules and regulations because the other groups that do adopt them are wrong for doing so. The groups that adopt them are, alas, right for doing so. The larger a community gets, the more varied its population and the more distant its members, the more inevitable it becomes that serious and unresolvable conflict will arise. That's why you need all the rules and regulations and enforcement mechanisms.
Whenever a community tries to do the egalitarian thing, to erect a more open structure without so many rules and regulations, to appeal to the best in everyone to do the right thing because they know it's best and not because of any rule forcing them to, the same thing always happens: sooner or later, big horrible conflicts arise because someone or other not only can't handle the freedom, but finds it actively necessary to challenge the system, to fling down various nonnegotiable gauntlets which defy resolution without violating one or more of the ideals which the community thought it was trying to uphold.
In the present case, we have a clash over offensive behavior, and more specifically, offensive behavior which, it can be plausibly claimed, ought to be protected free speech. But in any large community that tries to operate by consensus and good feeling rather than picayune regulations, there are two important meta-rules which everyone has to follow:
Obviously these two rules have a belt-and-braces quality to them, much like the IETF Robustness Principle. If no one ever offended, we wouldn't have to work at not being offended. If everyone worked at not being offended, no one would have to worry about offending. But, in fact, both rules are equally important. It's a two-way street; we have to meet in the middle.
Now, it's unfortunately the case that not everyone is able to work amicably within informal rule structures like these. Doing the right thing for the right reason, simply because it's the right thing and the right reason, is not something everyone can do. That's why the larger and older a community is, the more rules and enforcement mechanisms it typically has, because it's bound to have the members that cause the problems that only the rules could solve.
When we're faced with horrendous conflict stemming from various parties' inability to voluntarily get along with each other under the informal rules we've got, we really have only two choices: (1) add more formal rules which would resolve the conflict, or (2) figure out some way to get along without the parties who can't get along.
We're open to everyone, we want to tell anyone and everyone they're welcome here, we don't want to drive anyone away, but the plain fact is that some people cannot and will never be able to function reasonably in an environment as open as this one. We who remain must understand that, and must not feel too bad about seeing people leave for this reason, and must not feel too guilty about the occasional need to ask them to leave. Furthermore, out of self-preservation, we may need a few new (hopefully informal) meta-rules to ensure that the message is sent to people who can't get along that they'll probably have to find another place to play, that we can't and won't afford the time and energy required by the disruptions they insist on causing.
This isn't just a userbox issue. If we banned userboxes, certain editors would still want to find ways of making provocative personal statements, and other editors would still want to be offended by them. But it's not just a provocation/take offense issue, either. The inability to respect another person's position (which obviously prevails on both side of the provocation/offensensitivity divide) is also central to the internecine quarrels some editors can't avoid having when they grapple with POV issues in articles. We can't always afford those proliferating disruptions, either.
Up above people were worried about freedom of speech. This both is and isn't a free-speech issue. For one thing, free speech is free only as long as everyone is free to ignore it. For another thing, we obviously have no absolute right to free speech here, for I do not have the right to say "2 + 2 = 5" on the Mathematics page and insist that the statement be kept there. Finally, and most importantly, freedom of speech in a society as open as this one carries a responsibility to, well, speak responsibly.
Up above people were worried about democracy, communism, and fascism. Someone called Wikipedia a benevolent dictatorship, but I think it would be even more appropriate to call it a benevolent anarchy. We've got, collectively, more than enough freedom and power here to utterly destroy ourselves, and the reason that we do not is that we choose not to.
I encourage everyone to keep making that choice.
Steve Summit ( talk) 02:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Let me break out my favorite two graphs, to show why wikipedia is so solid at its basis:
The extremely narrow spike on the histogram is very spectacular and compelling.
Basically, most articles are not edited by most people, most of the time. This means that the community is segmented, and most large conflicts are just never going to start. (The same might not be true of the project namespace. I'm hoping to get that histo'ed too :-) ) Kim Bruning 10:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Quadell's Proposal: Userboxes should tell what you know, not what your POV is.
Very few of us are pro-userbox or anti-userbox, really. I think there is a clear consensus that {{ user pedophile}} does no good and much harm to Wikipedia, and that {{ user de}} does no harm and much good. In between is a lot of confusion, and it's sometimes difficult to sort out what's helpful and what's harmful. But in the end, I think that has to be the guiding principle: is this userbox helpful or harmful to Wikipedia? The question is not whether I would like to express myself this way – self-expression is all good and well, but Wikipedia is not designed as a forum for this. As well all know, it's an encyclopedia.
So I propose that userboxes (defined as templates or categories used in user space) be allowed and even encouraged if they tell what you know, but discouraged or even disallowed if they tell what you believe or what your POV is. We should all be free to express our beliefs and PsOV on our userpages, but not in templates or categories, as that causes more trouble than it's worth.
For example, if I want to know more about Catholicism, or I'm looking for people who know a lot about Catholicism to help write an article or settle a dispute, then it would help to have a {{ user Catholicism-3}} userbox and Category:User Catholicism-3. These would help me find experts or interested people. This is very similar to Babelboxes, and it would be helpful in writing an encyclopedia. But I shouldn't care whether the person is pro- or anti-Catholic. If I do care about the person's POV, it's probably not for the purposes of improving Wikipedia. Userboxes should not make it easy to find people who agree with you; they should make it easy to find people who know a lot about a topic.
If we look at userboxes through that lens, it's pretty clear that {{ User:UBX/Theism}} and {{ user atheist}} aren't useful - but {{ user existence of God-3}} would be, in that it would indicate that you are an expert in theological arguments for or against the existence of God. That's useful in writing an encyclopedia.
Note that on my userpage I have what superficially look like userboxes. But they don't use templates and they don't use categories, so these shouldn't really be troublesome for anyone. They can't be used for factionalism any more than the phrase "I am a vegetarian" could.
To summarize, in my opinion userboxes should be free to tell what you know. But if you want to express your beliefs and PsOV, you can do so - so long as you don't use templates or categories. Comments? – Quadell ( talk) ( bounties) 13:57, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Truly, JDoorj a m Talk 19:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Please consider my proposal, Wikipedia:Unacceptable userspace material, which is intended as a means to minimally quantify "bad" materials in userspace which the practice of including on userpages has a detrimental effect on Wikipedia, as opposed to making overbroad blanket restrictions. The goal is to maintain the liberal use of userspace while addressing concerns of divisiveness and objectionableness, avoiding template deletionism, and providing a defined standard on which compulsory userpage amendments can be based. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 21:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Today I took the opportunity of an interview on IRC, organised by The Signpost, to ask Jimbo about userboxes:
I think that puts it pretty plainly. It's not just that he doesn't personally like userboxes, but speaking as the leader of the project he finds the current situation unacceptable. Something must change, one way or the other. -- Tony Sidaway 05:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
And here's what he said on the official English Wikipedia mailing list. I don't know why, but a lot of otherwise clued up Wikipedians don't subscribe to that, which is a shame because they often end up wondering what's happening when a big change comes along.
(Excerpted)
Full version at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-February/039853.html
-- Tony Sidaway 06:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Presuming we do enact some policy on "good" versus "bad" userboxes, it occurred to me that it will be important to give people lots of help in deciding which is which. I think one way of focusing the distinction is to notice that the userboxes we're worried about, the divisive and polemical ones, all carry a second, not-so-hidden message:
Ask yourself: are you actually stating a salient fact, or are you wearing something on your sleeve?
Ask yourself honestly: will anyone be offended by the statement in this userbox?
Ask yourself even more honestly: are you secretly hoping that they will?
If you expect that someone is likely to be offended, and if your excuse is "but it's their fault for being so closeminded", that might not be a good enough reason. Perhaps they are closeminded, and perhaps it would be a good thing if they could be taught otherwise, but it's not clear that their minds will automatically open in response to statements which mostly seem to taunt their opposing beliefs. In any case, it is clear that Wikipedia is not the place for this education to take place. It would be much, much better not to put this potentially-offensive statement on your Wikipedia user page. Put it on your personal home page, and put a link to your personal home page on your Wikipedia user page, and people who are interested enough in you to follow that link can then learn everything you want them to.
Steve Summit (
talk) 17:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
So it all cancels out. And we should all forget about this stupid debate and get on with our lives and stop pussyfooting and wasting everybody's time.-- Greasysteve13 06:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I think it would help de-escalate tensions to avoid implying that people are pro-userbox or anti-userbox. It's like being pro-category or anti-category. Very few people object to babelboxes, and very few people would (I think) object to a box saying "This user knows a lot about ancient Rome". What many people are against is expressing your biases in a way that encourages factionalism. No one objects to expressing POV on userpages. No one (or almost no one) objects to expressing POV in pastel boxes with cute images, if that's what you choose to do. Many of us, however, do object to using templates and/or categories to express POV, for a number of reasons that have been detailed all over this talk page.
People who think of themselves as "pro-userbox" will be more likely to object to statements that sound like they're "anti-userbox", and vice versa. It avoids bad feelings, and it's more accurate, to say something like the following:
"I don't object to userboxes per se, and I don't object to people expressing themselves on their userpages. I just object to using templates and categories to express a POV. Templates weren't designed for this. Templates were designed to make text easy to copy, and that's not helpful with POVs. (Shouldn't your beliefs be your own anyway?) And categories make it easy to group similar articles together, but when you group people together by POV, that leads to problems. So I think templates and categories should not be used this way. That doesn't make me anti-userbox; just anti-factionalism."
This is much more effective than saying "Userboxes are bad. Delete them all." – Quadell ( talk) ( bounties) 14:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Has the Wikimedia foundation, board, or legal representative made a citable decision regarding the use of fair use images on userboxes?
I don't think the issue itself is one for discussion/consensus. It's a legal matter, and beyond the abilities of non-lawyers to state for certainty. So, I'm looking for a statement by some authoritative person/group. -- Durin 21:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
As long as it was not offending or illegal, we have always allowed users much freedom in their userspace and user page. Why should we treat userboxes differently? This discussion is wasting valuable time of many editors, time that should go towards improving Wiki, not having to defend parts of their userpages. If somebody feels they deserve a few boxes for their trouble, and want to share it with others - great, that will raise their morale and make them more dedicated to Wiki. By fighting the boxes, we are alienating various users and damaging our community. I am strongly opposed to SD of userboxes, and any limits on their use that go further then Wikipedia:User page policy.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:36, 18 February 2006 (UTC)