User:Alanbly/Userboxes

The following is my idea of how Userboxes are perceived within the community and my idea for a path towards consensus concerning them. I have only been actively editing for a few months so you'll have to bear with me if my conclusions are a bit naive. I will note that I have read WP:JOU and The German Solution and, while I agree with neither completely, I do understand what they say, so please don't quote them at me to refute my position.

Current Consensus

• Jimbo Wales and many others have presented the case that Userboxes can be used to promote polemical beliefs and thus break down the community and the mutual respect between its editors. This is the main support for the position against userboxes in general.
• Debates on userboxen lately have pointed to facilitating collaboration as the only redeeming characteristics of userboxes and User categories in general.
• Wikipedia exists as a community only insofar as the community allows each of us, as individuals, to contribute more effectively.
• All policies (on WP:NPOV and WP:ADVERT especially) must stand, even in the User namespace

Basic Guideline

Userboxes should only provide information which will allow users to collaborate more effectively.

Explanation

The stated definition of Wikipedia is "Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect." We must therefore limit all content in the project, including the User namespace, to this goal. What this means in terms of Userboxes:

1. Userboxes should not list or promote beliefs (external to editing philosophy), causes, or opinions
   • Advocating better observance of guidelines is not inherently destructive
   • The entirety of this effort should be held to WP:NPOV and thus, a user's page should not convey their biases or points of view
   • Believing in a cause, being a member of an organization, holding to a specific set of beliefs, etc... does not make a user an expert, or even an informed party concerning the subject of their own belief. (I may tend to agree with the Libertarians but I am not a political scientist and couldn't tell you the first thing about the political party)
   • Bringing users together through common belief encourages WP:POV and community segmentation; whereas, bringing users together based on mutual need (Expertise, Knowledge, Editing Ability) encourages collaboration and community bonding
2. Userboxes must convey some type of expertise or familiarity with a subject and improve accessibility to such
   • Collaboratively, an editor is only as useful as what he or she can contribute
   • If a userbox does not make it easy to find a user who could write an article an the subject of the userbox, the userbox should not exist
   • Userboxes should only be used to locate other users who can help with specific types of contributions. To this end, userboxes should always be associated with User categories
3. Userboxes should not violate or be exempted from any policy which applies to Templates or user pages
   • All information in an editor's userboxes should be factual
   • No defamatory, derogatory, or libelous information should be added to any userbox
4. Userboxes must belong to the community
   • No one should be offended by the content of a userbox if they are not offended by its subject
5. Userboxes should always be used by the minority
   • As soon as the declaration of a userbox becomes a majority state, the userbox is no longer necessary

Specific Ideas on Userboxes (mutually independent)

• Require explicit approval for userbox creation
• Remove, as a rule, any userbox with the phrases "This user believes", "This user likes", "This user promotes", or similar which advocate a given point of view and which are not specific to editing philosophy within Wikipedia