User:EVula/opining/About my userpage

The issue of my userpage was recently brought up to none other than Mr. Jimbo Wales himself. Specifically, my collection of insults, which someone was concerned about potential WP:DENY violations on. There was a nice little chat about it, with Jimbo ultimately saying "I don't find EVula's userpage to be especialy problematic, even if it is different from what I choose to have, and different from what I recommend".[1]

The below is my commentary on my own userpage. I may update this in the future, and I've tweaked it a bit to make more sense in an out-of-context environment. You're welcome to read the original version.

My initial commentary

One of the things I strive for in my Wikipedia activities, aside from improving the encyclopedia obviously, is to have fun (hell, just look at some of my edit summaries, if not the edits themselves). My wiki-philosophy in a nutshell: If I'm not having fun, it isn't worth doing (which is why I've taken breaks before). Compiling and maintaining that list amuses me to no end (come on, who wouldn't laugh at being threatened to be hung from a pine tree?), and more importantly, it apparently entertains other editors as well; I've received at least one barnstar of good humor based on that list alone, and plenty of other positive comments from people who are in the exact same position I'm in (ie: targets for vandals, just because they're an administrator doing their job). Admins get plenty of shit from people who quite frankly don't know any better, and it's nice to have a little outlet for that.

As for any concerns about "spotlighting" the vandals and their work... I don't have a Table of Contents, and the list is below the first-page threshold on practically any screen (even if it were physically lower on the screen, the name of the section would still appear in a Table of Contents, which is partly why I don't have one), meaning that it isn't immediately obvious; I've thought about putting it in one of those hide/show boxes, but I simply don't want to (I find them obnoxious more often than not, and it would interfere with the sidebar I've got on the right). I'm not a big fan of protecting people from themselves; as I don't force anyone to view my userpage (if I could force people to do things, it'd be for something worthwhile, like their credit card number), it's a little "off the beaten wiki-path". Unless my userpage were to appear in Time or something (in which case I'd shit a brick), I don't think I'm "spotlighting" trolls.

While this is an apparent non-issue (both by by Jimbo's originally-sought opinion and the other contributors here), I still felt like providing an explanation. I'd be happy to expand on this on my talk page (unless Jimbo is just really curious and wants the conversation to stay on his userpage).

Additional notes

Now, all that said, I understand the argument itself, and certainly don't want to make vandalism look "cool" or popularize it or anything else like that (keeping in mind that I consider WP:DENY mentality to be based partly on rampant paranoia). In the vein of trying to address the concern without removing the list from the front page (which will never happen), I've been trying to push it down as far on the page as I naturally can; for example, I've put the Interwiki links, Friends on Wikipedia, and Editing milestones sections above the collection of insults to push it outside of the first couple of screens. I've hidden the table of contents, which also hides the section from the very first glance of the page. The people who know it is there (or who link directly to it) can still find it, but the chances of someone zipping right past my page without seeing it are that much higher.

Update—In an attempt to even further address the claims, without removing the section entirely, I've moved the entire collection to my User:EVula/fun sub-page. This makes it even further out of the way. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)