User:Crotalus horridus/Abolishing userboxes considered harmful

Introduction

Userboxes – templates that make small colored boxes which express membership, opinions or particular skills on user pages – have recently become one of the most controversial aspects of Wikipedia. One of the primary objections raised by userbox opponents is that userboxes do not help to build the encyclopedia. While it is true that many userboxes do not directly further this goal, this objection is misguided for a variety of reasons. Attempting to abolish or severely restrict userboxes will not "professionalize" the encyclopedia; rather, it will drive away good contributors and create far more strife than the userboxes themselves.

Analogies to corporate management

One of the most important works on human resources management in IT is Peopleware, written by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister. DeMarco and Lister argue strongly in favor of minimizing unnecessary bureaucracy and needless rules - a principle that Wikipedia has adopted (see m:Instruction creep). One example used by DeMarco and Lister is the introduction of a corporate dress code. Even if no one thought about the issue before, the introduction of a dress code will instantly polarize the office. Soon, people will be able to think about nothing else. What had previously been a non-issue becomes a huge, and tremendously divisive, issue. It is not difficult to see how userboxes have had the same effect here. Starting with the mass deletion of userboxes on New Year's Eve 2005, what had previously been a non-issue has risen to a massive place of prominence in the minds of many Wikipedians. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of man-hours have been wasted in unnecessary, divisive debates over whether specific userboxes (or userboxes in general) should stay or go. While the original deletion of userboxes was undoubtedly undertaken in good faith, the unfortunate experience has shown us that it is far less damaging, divisive, and disruptive to "live and let live" than to attempt to fight many users on an issue that they feel very strongly about.

Organizations damaged by unnecessary rulemaking

In the late 1970s, Atari was king of the gaming world. However, it possessed a hidden flaw, one that would eventually lead to its downfall. When the company had been run by founder Nolan Bushnell, employees were allowed a great deal of leeway as long as they remained creative producers. There were no set hours, no dress codes, no petty rules. When Atari was bought by Warner Communications, however, all this changed. Dress codes were implemented, time clocks were erected, and the old laissez-faire culture of Atari went out the window. Atari boss Ray Kassar even went as far as to publicly brand the programmers as "prima donnas" [1].

Atari soon learned how mistaken this approach was. In 1979, four of Atari's best game coders (David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead) left Atari to found their own company - Activision [2]. The loss was most keenly felt in 1982, when it was time to produce the home version of Pac-Man, and there were no good programmers left - none would work in Warner's PHB environment [3]. A contract programmer was hastily enlisted to write Pac-Man, which proved to be a tremendous flop. Pac-Man and another horrendous game, E.T., paved the road for Atari's downfall and the video game crash of 1983. In July 1984, Warner gave up and sold Atari.

The lessons learned from this are even more pressing here, as Wikipedia is a volunteer project. If we impose too many restrictions on contributors, then the barriers to departure are even lower than in a for-profit firm. We have already seen a number of excellent contributors quit – not over userboxes, but over the absurd levels of strife that have poisoned Wikipedia as a result of efforts to eradicate them.

Userboxes – even annoying userboxes – are a small price to pay to keep contributors happy and to continue building a free, high-quality encyclopedia that anyone can edit.