Wikipedia talk:Proposed policy on userboxes/Archive Two

Copyright images and user boxes

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)

Correct, they don't. Rob Church ^Talk 15:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What about templates? Someone recently removed Image:CompassRose.gif from the Anglican portion of {{user religion}}, on the grounds that it's a "non-free" image, but no one seems to mind it being on {{Anglicanism}} and {{Anglican Churches}}. (Or have I just violated WP:BEANS?) --Angr (tɔk) 15:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I removed some images from User templates yesterday. Please note that User page content may not include "fair use" images. Templates made for user pages are subject to this Wikipedia policy. Templates that are made for Wikipedia encyclopedic content may contain fair use images. TCorp 16:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Update. my bad. you can't use fair use images in ANY tamplate. TCorp 16:53, 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)

Maybe so, but I think most would not agree with that analysis. Further, if it came down to it I'd rather have boxes with only PD/GFDL images than no boxes, that is, I'd give up fair use images gladly to keep the boxes themselves. ++Lar: t/c 00:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't rely think a policy is needed

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)

Fortunately Wikipedia:Fair use has that covered with "Fair use images ... should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages." (that clause was there at least as far back as Nov 2005) Templates are different from user pages, because 1) a violation of fair use in a template gets multiplied as it's placed on many different pages, and 2) as WP:FAIR indicates, use in templates may be by definition moving into a gray area of fair use law or an outright violation of fair use law. --Interiot 15:53, 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)

Ditto. Iamvered 05:55, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Policy problem

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)

This "Networking" being blamed on userboxes is somewhat lame to say the least. There's a wikipedia NPOV policy already in place for encyclopedic content. User pages need not be NPOV. And even if someone wanted to find someone else with the same beliefs, or say administrative privileges, to gang up on for example the evolution page, or gang up on pages like these, there's IRC and a whole list of other resources that are far more effective than userboxes one could use. TCorp 20:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think the IRC, email, and off-Wikipedia-forum networking is a FAR greater threat than userboxes, categories, and on-Wikipedia networking could ever be. At least on-Wikipedia methods are all transparent. I've been disturbed by the role that various IRC channels seem to have played in coordinating actions in the recent wheel wars and related RfC's. CarbonCopy (talk) 22:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree as well. It's shocking that the administrators present during the conversations in IRC don't respond to these coordinating actions. Gflores ^Talk 22:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I third this. The IRC is a useful tool at times, granted. However, due to the policy that publicly posting quotes from the chat is a bannable offense, Wikipedians cannot be held accountable for what they say in the channel, and any "coordinating actions" aren't readily apparant on Wikipedia. I understand some of the reasoning behind that rule, but I also cannot see such a lack of acountability being anything but problematic in an environment of massive collobaration. --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 23:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Fourthed. There's a policy on not quoting IRC?? Talk about your secret cabals... no, I don't believe in them here necessarily, being accused of being in several cabals in real life, but the appearance of impropriety is troublesome, to say the least. IRC/chat communications are anti-wiki, and the moreso if they are unrecordable/opaque. -- nae'blis _(talk) 16:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

If the IRC channel really is a secret cabal, it must be the most wiki-esque secret cabal in the world, since anybody can log onto it. Don't get me wrong, I think the no-IRC quotes policy is stupid, but I think you're attaching a significance and dark quality to the channel that does not exist. And God only knows why we're talking about this here... Lord Bob 16:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

There was definitely organizing in favor of the contested deletions and in support of certain individuals occuring on IRC during the conflict - and that is just on the official channel. Others exist. Ironically, one of the reasons given justifying emergency deletion of userboxes and cited as excuses for extrajudicial blocks during the conflict was the "improper" use of userboxes to recuit participants into the conflict. CarbonCopy (talk) 21:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Everyone who comes to Wikipedia.org has all of the tools at their disposal to edit the encyclopedia, take part in policy discussions, etc. A browser and (maybe) JavaScript) are the only requirements. IRC is an often-arcane, unreliable, confusing means of communication for non-techies. Also, IRC happens in real-time, without the chance to view it later (even in the history) as happens here and to a lesser extent on the mailing list. That's the difference, I think, and why I thought it was worth mentioning (since a large part of this discussion centers around the idea of Wikipedian categories being used for ballot stuffing). Plus I was just purely surprised to find out such a policy existed - buried on meta, apparently. The fact that you can be banned from #wikipedia for publishing private logs doesn't help, IMO. Sometimes the appearance of impropriety can be as damaging as the actual improper behavior itself would be, if not moreso. -- nae'blis _(talk) 17:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Childish but true

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)

• Something illegal, a cop can ask to remove - but a political statement which is offensive to some is protected under free speech.--God of War 20:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • True enough, but Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech. Free speech, while certainly a great thing, is not an automatic defense on Wikipedia. --DragonHawk 21:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

This free speech is regulated. I thought swearing wasn't allowed on userboxes except to a certain extent. I am against Wikiswearing except when it's directed at oneself (such as the "This user speaks Bullshit" userboxes.) Plus, unregulated free speech doesn't nessisarily mean anarchy. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 22:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Since when has this applied to userpages? The only thing i canthink of is Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Circeus 23:36, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Reading the existing policy and guideline stuff, I don't see userpages as being totally excempt from Wikipedia policy. Indeed, WP:UP is a guideline, not policy. Userpages are allowed more latitude, for reasons noted, but they are not a general, personal web space. They exist first and foremost to help the cause of writing an encyclopedia. This is my take, obviously but I think it has objective merit, in that we should make sure that everything we do helps create a better encyclopedia. If something isn't about that goal, it really doesn't belong here. Yes, that means childish behavior does not belong here. Sorry.  :) --DragonHawk 03:15, 5 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.

• Standard boxes are administered and categorized and allow people to find help and competence amongst others.
• Personal userboxes that rely on standard manners are fun and contribute to a good community spirit.
• Personal offending or illegal ones are to be banned. But my motto was : NMPN no more policies needed, because it is clearly stated that we have enough of them. Too much law kills the law. --Harvestman 17:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I feel as long as boxes are legal and portray something from a neutral point of view, thye can be created. I feel advertising is acceptable to a certain extent. - Erebus555 13:38, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Resource usage

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)

I would also like to add to this resource discussion that userboxes can attract new users (I am fond of them myself!) who then give more to the community. I joined wikipedia by making a fun userpage, then finding stuff to contribute on, and while I'm still new and haven't given much back yet, I intend to stick around in part because the community seems friendly and fun. Regulating self-expression is likely to cause me to just vanish from the service as a producer, and pretty much push me back into a consumer-only role. In other words, I pretty much feel like the userboxes do serve a productive purpose, in the form of making the users happy and content to stick around. Certainly my downloading dozens of high resolution images as a consumer doesn't compare to my resource consumption with a few small, mostly-text userboxes anyway? ♥ GeekGirlSarah ♥ 23:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I think having humorous little sideshows to the main attraction that is the encyclopedia is necessary to keep all of the editors sane and actually enjoying their roles here. These pages are good for just a quick little reprieve, a good chuckle or two, and nothing more. There are not all that many of these compared to the massive amounts of actual articles on the site, so I fail to see exactly how these pages matter more than the rest of the site in terms of resource usage, or anything else. They're usually never linked to outside of the Wikipedia namespace, so there's no real bleeding into the project proper. No one except a regular visitor/contributor would ever find these pages, so I don't think they're in the way or anything. Mo0[talk] 02:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes that contribute little (directly) to the encyclopedia is a wasteful use of Wikipedia's computing

I'm just saying... this argument applies to those sites. Wouldn't you say your response can be applied to Userboxes? Userboxes are used by no one except a regular visitor/contributor. Anyway, it looks like it doesn't matter, Nickptar seems to say it hardly doesn't have any effect on resources. Gflores ^Talk 04:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Aye. Even if it did, Wikipedia is about people. It is not about writing an encyclopedia. Wikipedia exists to emancipate those bound to intellectual poverty. Wikipedia exists to further enlighten those who are fortunate enough to already have a (comparatively) substantial education. Those who believe Wikipedia is about Wikipedia contribute to its failure. cookiecaper (talk / contribs) 08:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

That's not how I read Wikipedia. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I like userboxes

... 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)

Also, the argument that this is a privileged way to encourage vote-stuffing is a bit rich. It is equally a privileged way of /identifying/ bloc-based vote stuffing. +sj +

You are implying that a person's vote would be discounted if a piece of vote-getting spam is sitting on their user page. Endomion 19:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

New Redirect

I created a new abbreviation for this policy - WP:UBP --God of War 07:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

A draft WP:UBP Proposal

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 don't think anyone has been using it that I can see. Perhaps you should raise the points here, seek consensus and then edit them into the policy draft? Also I think it may not be a good idea to use the {{CURRENTDAY}} et. al. templates in your signature as they resolve to what time it is right NOW when the page is rendered, not what time you posted. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 03:20, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

(on signature) You're completely right of course. I thought I had found all the pages that signature had propogated to, but one of them was protected at the time. —Daelin @ 2006–01–22 22:12Z

Concerns about not regulating userboxes

Moved from main page to talk, as it is in dispute -- nae'blis _(talk) 19:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• Userboxes may be a wasteful use of Wikipedia's computing power, and importantly, a wasteful use of real dollars and pounds (and yen and rupees) that people have contributed.
  • No. Wikipedia's main bottleneck, I believe, is server CPU load, most of which comes from serving up articles to readers, who are, after all, the vast majority of WP users. In fact, I would bet that less than 1% of server resources are used by user pages (not just userboxes). In any case, the actual number of extant userboxes should barely affect CPU load at all, as the only resource required to store them is disk space, which isn't a problem. (True, having extra entries in the database slows down operations a teeny tiny bit... but again here, the entire user space is a drop in the bucket.) ~~ N (t/c) 23:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Some potential donors may resent having their own pretty pastel boxes surreptitiously removed. Endomion 02:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Raises hand and while closing wallet.Gateman1997 19:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
        • I'm not sure this is a good argument to make. Even if it's true it comes off sounding a bit petty. If this really is an issue, a verifiable study showing a big drop off in donations, or a large number of lost editors might be a lot more effective. That said, if you don't want to donate, for whatever reason, you should feel free not to do so. IMHO.++Lar: t/c 03:22, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

A Question from Soltak

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)

• Because if I think an article on Star Wars needs to be expanded, I could search out Star Wars fans via userboxes and leave them a message requesting a look-see and an editorial contribution. Endomion 19:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

  Ah, but that is the same manner in which votes can be gathered as well...hence the main problem.--MONGO 19:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

  Is there any evidence that this kind of abuse is widespread? Yes, there will always be a few who abuse any tool or nifty item, but the vast majority won't. Using this as a reason to disallow userboxes is bad. Next thing you know, people will be wanting to limit who can post on a talk page because it might be used to "gather votes". It's just an absurd argument. Abusers can be dealt with as they come along, but there's no point in taking something away from everyone just because there's the possibility that someone might abuse it. --nihon 21:52, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  I have no problem with what you described, Endomion. However, I don't think "User Who Would Shoot Greedo First" is an effective method. I am fully in support of "Users Who Are Star Wars Experts," "Users Experienced in Politics" and the like purely for the purpose of article collaboration and expansion. However, as pointed out above, that's not the only purpose such groupings have been or will be used for.Soltak | Talk 20:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

A stronger fair use image argument, with a compromise suggestion

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)

• If I'm not mistaken, this is equally in violation of copyright law, which cannot be changed by an on-Wikipedia decision. It's still not fair use. ~~ N (t/c) 00:42, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
• You are correct that this, too, would constitute a legal violation. In addition to the illegality of CJ's suggestion, it's just a bad idea. "Can't we just allow it in this little area under these strict circumstances?" can very quickly become "What's the problem with allowing it everywhere?" Soltak | Talk 00:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
• However those images designed and relased by there creators for self-identification, such as the logos used in the "Democrat" and "Republican" userboxes, are prettyl clearly leagal under US law. Use of such logos in userboxes would be a limited and IMO rational policy change, and would not in any way subject us to legal liability, although we should run that past the foundation's legal experts to confirm this. DES ^(talk) 00:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm sympathetic to what I call "community use only" licensing, which allows media to be used in community space (such as user space) but not in article space (except where it can be used without license as fair use). However, media whose licensing permits such use must be clearly marked as such. And you will need to get consensus to allow this, which may be hard (my personal portrait was recently deleted because it was licensed as "{{CommunityUseOnly}}"). Kelly Martin (talk) 04:42, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Introducing a new license tag type for that seems a good idea!... but independent of this, no? Until and unless such an license tag were introduced, boxes containing fair use images, in my view, need to be marked for cleanup, and if not cleaned up in short order, marked for deletion. But the key point about that, IMHO, is to work the process, not just delete them outright without first giving folks a chance to correct them. The userbox project team works amazingly fast from what I have seen. ++Lar: t/c 03:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

If you're really opposed to "silly" userboxes, then either:

• Nominate Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense for deletion. It would be a WP:POINT violation for me to do this (as I briefly considered doing). But if you actually believe that silly and unencyclopedic material has no place in any namespace, you have no excuse.

• Provide a reasonable argument for how "silly" userboxes are worse for the encyclopedia than BJAODN.

(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)

Are poll-stackers silly?

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)

I think to gain support from at least myself, if not from a number of editors besides myself, for that view (and for that criteria) you are going to need to positively demonstrate that the mere fact that something COULD be used a certain way implies that it definitely (or highly probably) WILL be used that way. IMHO. Because IRC can be used that way and so can email and so can telephones and so can off wiki discussion groups. ++Lar: t/c 02:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

What about WP:TfD#Template:User allboxes? It is clearly designed with this purpose in mind and is well suited for it. --- Charles Stewart 02:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I see where you made that assertion in the TfD, but I'm not clear on how you substantiated it, as I believe I pointed out there as well. ++Lar: t/c 04:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what kind of information would constitute substantiation for you. To be honest, I think it is not possible for me to convince you that any use of userboxes could ever justify deletion. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 08:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Postscript Wrt to IRC, email, etc, if there were technologies that could be effectively used to subvert poll-syacking operations organised through these channels, I would probably support them. --- Charles Stewart 02:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Just ban their use. Seems simple enough to me. You're going after the tool, not the user. Guns don't kill people, and userboxes don't stack votes. ++Lar: t/c 04:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• Ban email? How? --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 08:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
• And the case is (if possible) stronger than with guns, which may well be the most dangerous tool for their purpose. Here, two other tools are available: the cat (which we could also ban, I suppose) and the vote on any poll on the issue, say at Project Userbox. Shall we delete them too? ;-? Septentrionalis 04:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

  I propose banning categories and distinctive images as well as templtes when they are well suited for poll-stacking. For various reasons, I don't think polls work well for poll-stackers, mainly because past polling behaviour will not be a good guide to how they react to when it is suggested they particpate in a new poll. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 08:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

A plea for Sanity

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)

• Omni Maximus God_of_War. Omni Maximus God_of_War.... A voice of reason. Thank you, lord. --CJ Marsicano 06:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey, thats from my userpage! (well, most of it!) Ian¹³_ID:540053 14:24, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• GFDL buddy. I copied two sentences I liked.--God of War 15:02, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

  I don't disprove, and anyway, GFDL demands the origional author is credited :P Ian¹³_ID:540053 17:41, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• I agree here, that it helps building a sense of community. As long as userboxes do not attack anyone personally, or condone things like vandalising Wikipedia Template:User_GWB, I feel they do not harm anyone and should be allowed. Including those that are POV Template:User_Libertarian and those that are silly Template:User_Strawberry. In case anyone uses these for vote stacking it's the action that should be acted upon, not necessarely the tool. -- Sneltrekker 15:00, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

NPA and CIVIL issues

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.

• Yes. {{User 2006 New Year Day Participate}} used to more-or-less call anti-userbox users Stalinists, and the word "purge" still creates an implication of such.
  • The actual image on the end of this link says 'This user actively participated in rebellion against the Great 2006 New Year's Day Userbox Purge, and would do it again.' Deleting this rather more suggests an absence of sense of humour and proportion than anything else. Sandpiper 20:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I support that userbox, but not the RfC link. Ian¹³_ID:540053 17:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

(Preceding moved out of the proposed policy, since discussion belongs here on the talk page, not in the proposed policy itself. Aumakua 16:01, 7 January 2006 (UTC))

I disagree that "the word 'purge' still creates an implication of" Stalinist purges. The word 'purge' is used in many applications without "Stalinist" association. For example, this weekend I am running a "shop order purge" where I work. This removes completed shop orders from our manufacturing data system, and updates master files consistent with what those orders accomplished. This is a regular recurring process so as to make sure that only active shop orders are in the production data system. I believe that "shop order purge" language is consistent with APICS standard terminology for Enterprise resource planning. Other people may be able to cite other examples of "purge" that does not imply any "Stalinist" association. What do you call "the removal of deleted and closed records" from a computer system? I believe that any word like "delete" or "wipe" or "purge" or "obliterate" or "remove" that means essentially the same thing, can be abused to be directed against doing it against people, instead of against computer records. User:AlMac|^(talk) 22:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• Be careful with userbox WP:NPA. I was in a WP:DRV to undelete the speedily deleted Template:user userbox purge template. Inline with the discussion to undelete it, A compromise was suggested of removing the image of stalin. So I thought I would be helpful and post a compromise - stalin free - red little user box with the words: "this user survived the great userbox purge of 2006". That is all it said. Instant 24 hour-ban. No warning. No chance for appeal. That's all. Reason given, NPA. So be careful with the boxes. They really seem to make some admins angry.--God of War 05:18, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• Whatever happened to WP:AGF? Ian¹³_ID:540053 22:21, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes are just visible categories

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. ~MDD4696 00:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

People want to advertise their opinions to others. Userboxes can do that better than categories.--God of War 01:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Erm, that's exactly what I'm saying. They aren't any more than (highly) visible categories, so they should be treated much the same as regular categories. Of course, certain rules would be more lax for them (i.e. WP:NPOV) to permit freedom of expression, but others would be just as strict (WP:NPA and WP:FU for example) to prevent offending people or going against previous precedents. ~MDD4696 03:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

That is true, but I see userboxes as separate from categories. Each can exist without the other. Evaluating one using criteria for the other may not be the most effective way to look at them. I support guidelines that suggest certain types of userboxes should not have associated categories, as a compromise, to address the vote stacking issue. ++Lar: t/c 03:31, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see how userboxes can exist without categories. It is technically possible to create a userbox template without listing any wiki categories in it, but when a group of users all put the template on their userpages, they become part of a category in the general sense of the term; it is my opinion then that the userbox should be treated as a category, despite its lack of any actual wiki categories. Of course, it would be different if everyone used subst:, but that would go against a userbox as I defined it (it would no longer be uniform amongst all users). ~MDD4696 03:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I see the vote stacking issue as a moot point. This is a global problem within Wikipedia, and there are many other methods that users can employ to accomplish this. Perhaps I am taking WP:AGF to the limit here, but I trust that people will do the right thing. If someone gets a group of people with similar interests to vote on an issue, I think that most of the individuals would do the right thing and vote as they would have voted, had they visited the issue without prompting.

Another way to look at it would be to say that you can never really achieve "voting homogeny" on a wiki. It is a rare occurence that we ever get an even distribution of all the users on Wikipedia to vote on an issue. Just take a look at WP:FPC--more often than not, the pictures are voted and commented upon by the same photography enthusiasts week after week. I certainly don't consider this a bad thing. Those users are enthusiastic about the subject, and devote more thought and effort into the commenting and voting than the general userbase would.

I see finding users who are concerned about a particular issue as a valuable tool in improving Wikipedia. There will be abuses, of course, but I don't think it will be any more significant than current abuses of the system. Prohibiting categories from userboxes won't prevent a determined user from contacting a group of users with shared interests and vote stacking. ~MDD4696 03:57, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Lar, I just read your comments under Vote stacking as an argument, and I think I we basically agree. I suppose there will be some cases where the categories should be prohibited, but I think I would prefer a reactive approach rather than a proactive one. ~MDD4696 04:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we're almost on the same page too... I guess I'm just advocating that provision be made for certain boxes not to have (explicit) categories (your point that implicit categories are formed because of image linking backtracing, what links here backtracing, or even search string backtracing if someone subst'ed all their boxes is well taken), because, as you point out, I think (despite preferring to WP:AGF wherever possible, and despite my general dislike for m:instruction creep...) proactively defusing some of the criticism is a good idea. For the alternative is not so hot... ++Lar: t/c 05:23, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Why not just subst the damn things?

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)

I don't want to see substing mandatory, becuase that, in my viewpoint, would be instruction creep. On the other hand, I think substing of the templates should be encouraged, as it does provide a number of benefits, including reduced server load and protection against template vandalism or deletion. All of the userboxes on my userpage have been substed. --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 22:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Please see some of my comments above in Userboxes are just visible categories. I think part of the purpose for userboxes is to visibly categorize users in a uniform way. If people used subst:, and someone changed the template, not everyone's userbox would look the same. ~MDD4696 23:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

This is a good point, but quite frankly, I don't really see the value in making the userboxes display exactly the same way verus having slight differences. They would still be more-or-less uniform, which to me, is quite sufficient.--Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 06:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Having read these posts I subst'd mine and I actually like it this way; now my userpage doesn't change if someone vadalises the templates. -- Sneltrekker†My Talk 08:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Incitement to religious hatred

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

• Section 17A
  • Meaning of "religious hatred"
    • In this Part "religious hatred" means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief.
• Section 18:
  • (1) a person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—
    • (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial or religious hatred, or
    • (b) having regard to all the circumstances the words, behaviour or material are (or is) likely to be heard or seen by any person in whom they are (or it is) likely to stir up racial or religious hatred.

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)

• 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.--God of War 15:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

IANAL, but I believe it wouldn't hurt to have a boilerplate text to users, about users' assumption of risk with regard to any statutes that apply. I pass no judgement on the statutes, but if you want to be a bigot in contravention to the laws of your state, then it's you - not Wikipedia - who should get the summons.

In the meantime, taking a proactive, outside-the-courts approach, I've created the userbox {{User:UBX/Antiracist}} in an effort to be one step ahead of any Wiki Bigots. -- Daniel 16:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point out that though it looks like the two are covered in the same bill, racism and not not agreeing with or even hating religion or a particular religion are not the same at all.

Religion is not built into people: When people follow religion, the majority choose to follow religion (not including those in countries where it is illegal to ignore religious rules or to follow any other religion). No one gets to pick their race, and discrimination to other humans regarding the amount of pigment (melanin) in their skin is a completely ridiculous concept in itself, perpetuated only by the most ignorant of people.

If you are referring to the recent template that got deleted, {{User against scientology}}: The "Church of Scientology" is not considered a religion by UK law or indeed most other government's laws (see the article): In Germany and Belgium for example it is officially considered a totalitarian cult. In France (a very liberal country..) it's officially regarded as a dangerous cult. In Canada it is not recognised as a religion either. America is the exception, not the rule in considering Scientology a "religion", and Wikipedia is not Ameripedia. (and in itself it's widely regarded that Operation Snow White-like activities involving blackmail of government officials went on to achieve tax-exempt status in the US[1] --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 23:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see how having boxes supporting religions would be effected, only ones against, and the community mostly opposes them already on the gruonds of WP:CIVIL and for that matter offence. Ian¹³_ID:540053 22:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

"Mostly opposes" doesn't amount to a consensus, and (though admittedly I'm not up on all the ins-and-outs of Wikipedia policy) it should require a consensus that a person's actions pose an immediate threat to the community (under one or more of Wikipedia's established rules) in order to take that person's right to speak away from them - especially when they are speaking on their own UserPage where they're perfectly free to express their own opinions in other ways.

And might I add much of the reason why Scientology critics decided to phrase their userbox in such an up front way is based on the Church of Scientology's own record of incivility using dodgy tactics - e.g., SLAPP suits, abuses of copyright, and in the worst cases outright stalking and harassment. These are all actions which run counter to Wikipedia's mission, ideals, and rules. It does far less harm to allow Scientology critics to walk up to the bright line of incivility, than it does for a group with a record of being uncivil to promote itself in an unanswered and irresponsible manner. --Daniel 03:41, 10 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:

• Porn posted in a place where porn was legal ... the porn posters got extradited to a place where internet porn was banned.
• Some software was reverse engineered in a geography where this was not illegal, and they posted details, where this not illegal, then they went to a computer conference and were arrested and are now in prison for doing something that was not legal where they did not live.
• I can cite more ... the point I trying to make is that even though YOU do not live in what you consider to be a Police State, there are other states with more restrictive laws, and if you break the laws of ANY state (make peetry available to Afghanistan before the Taliban were overthrown, for example), you are at risk of THAT state coming after you. So just be thankful China is censoring Google, otherwise you could be headed for China prison for making pro-religion statements. User:AlMac|^(talk) 23:41, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

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)

Limiting number of userboxes?

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)

To the best of my knowledge, three is no such policy currently. WP:UP seems to be the curent relevant policy. Too many boxes can be confusing and unhelpful, however. DES ^(talk)

I don't think it makes sense to have a subjective guideline. We need hard numbers. Otherwise we are going to have the usual disputes. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 21:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is one of many issues that this policy proposal should cover. I think a soft number would be most appropriate; that is, a number that will give people an idea when they have too many, but will not limit people if they need or want just a few more. A hard number just seems to inflexible to me, and I have no idea how we would ever determine what an appropriate number is. ~MDD4696 22:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

IMO this is and should be a matter of taste, not rule. I see no need for a rule on this, but if people suggest that a page has too many boxes to be helpfu, a user would be wise to listen. A user who ignores such warnings will quite likely find his or her othre views taken less seriously -- that is the real enforcemetn mechanism, IMO. DES ^(talk) 22:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

One of the things I did, to have a large amount of boxes without being disruptive is, hide them behind a special javascript. A link show/hide appears that is needed to see them. The original idea comes from the user Firefox, he deserves credit. -- Sneltrekker†My Talk 22:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the soft limit is a good idea. A hard one would just be too arbitrary and opens the way to gaming of the policy. Johnleemk | Talk 02:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Even moreso than I oppose userbox content regulation, I think there is absolutely no reason to have a limit on the number of userboxes. Wikipedia is not paper, and user pages are a tiny drop in the bucket as far as space and bandwidth are concerned. Even editors who are generally against userboxes should note that a limit might be construed by many users as an endorsement to have approximately that number of userboxes (but no more). Brighterorange 04:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Since we limit page size, and since wikipedia isn't a web host, is it not worth instigating two points which would solve this problem?

1. All templates in the user space are substituted. Links to non-substituted templates are removed.
2. A maximum page size of 5-10k is placed on user pages.

Thoughts. Hiding talk 13:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's not a good idea. Templates are a useful way of coordinating changes across many uses, precisely how userboxes are used now. (And even if you hate userboxes, you must agree that there are MANY templates that would be useless if substituted, like Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects, etc.) We know that templates on user pages account for only a tiny fraction of Wikipedia's storage, CPU, and bandwidth. Limiting the user page to something so small would also damage uncontroversial activities, such as drafting proposals and article rewrites within a subpage. And again, I contend that there is no problem with the number of userboxes that needs to be solved by more regulations. Brighterorange 18:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Good points made, and taken. I withdraw my suggestions. Looking at them again, the second one isn't going to work anyway, because talk pages would eat up a lot of space. Hiding talk 19:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposed speedy deletion clause

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)

Lots of proposed clauses - comments please

What userboxes are

1. Userboxes are a standardized way of stating your views, beliefs and convictions for all to see and read on your user page. The policy of NPOV does not apply to the content of userboxes.
2. Userboxes are a method of networking with other wikipedians with similar views/beliefs for the purpose of writing/improving NPOV encyclopedic content, or for non-Wikipedia purposes.
3. Userboxes are only to be used on User pages (or sub-pages in the user namespace).

What userboxes are not

1. Userboxes are not to be used on Wikipedia articles, or on any other page that is directly associated with the encyclopedia its self.
2. Userboxes are not a method of canvasing other Wikipedians in an attempt to sway general opinion, or bias discussions or articles.
3. Userboxes are not a method of locating Wikipedians for the purpose of attack/ridicule/criticism based on the beliefs/views displayed on their userpage.
4. Userboxes are not to be used to determine the validity of a Wikipedian's comments/nominations during a discussion, nor the validity of a Wikipedian's edits of an article. Please assume good faith, and assume that every user is capable of NPOV contributes despite their own beliefs/views. No action should be taken against a Wikipedian as a result, in whole or in part, of the userboxes displayed on the Wikipedian's User page.

---

Proposed clauses written by gorgan_almighty 10:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments please

• I don't think there's much consensus for punishing those who rally others' votes and support with userboxes. It seems pretty clear that a determined canvaser would be able to do that pretty easily anyway, for example, by studying sympathetic edits to pertinent articles. There's no harm in simply discouraging the practice, but threats are way out of line. I would recommend merely striking "Any user caught doing this will be dealt with severely." --James S. 12:10, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• Very well, done. But note that canvasing of users and vote stacking were 2 of the main objections to userboxes. In my view it should definately be a blocking offense. —gorgan_almighty 12:23, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• More comments please, I would like to integrate these clauses into the main proposal if there's no objections. —gorgan_almighty 12:23, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think "dealt with severely" for canvassing is WAY over the top. It's not a behaviour to encourage but it often doesn't give the result the canvasser wants anyway, I got canvassed, and I went and gave my opinion and I suspect it was in the opposite direction of what the canvasser was hoping for. It is true that these are objections in the minds of SOME but not that there is general consensus. So, I object to integrating these into the main proposal without significant refinement and softening. ++Lar: t/c 13:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
    • The "dealt with severely" line has already been struck through. I will remove it entirely. What else do you object to or would you refine in my proposed clauses?
    • Okay I've softened up not-4 a bit as well. What else should be changed? —gorgan_almighty 14:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
      • While #1 is fine, #2 needs changing. As I said, I'm not convinced being notified of something that is of interest to me is a bad thing. This is a wiki and notification doesn't mean you get 100% or even a majority, the way you want. Knowledge is power, knowledge is goodness. If you really want to keep it I think you might want to put in that it is OK to let people know of things that interest them, just not to advocate for votes a certain way. But that's hairsplittingly fine distinctionwise. How do you tell? Measure outcomes, not intent. #3 seems already covered under rules against personal attacks. #4 I like in principle, except that people will make up their minds as they like. We had someone state opposition to an ArbComm candidate because they had "too many userboxes". If #4 was in effect, they would have to have hid that viewpoint. I would prefer that if people cannot be unbiased, that they put their biases on the table instead of hiding them. So... basically, the whole thing seems like it's more rules than we need? In fact I think it may be time to go through the entire proposal looking for redundancy and for things to combine, eliminate, or reference to existing rules rather than repeat. ++Lar: t/c 15:42, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
        • My understanding of the consensus reached in the infamous TfD/userbox templates concerning beliefs and convictions is that canvasing for votes & other forms of vote stacking are damaging to the encyclopedia (although no consensus was reached as to how to prevent it). Most people agree that it should not be allowed, even those like me who support userboxes. That may not be your personal opinion, but my proposed clauses take into account the general consensus. As for your ArbComm example, the idea that someone is unsuitable because they have "too many userboxes" is just plain stupid. It makes sense to have a clause disallowing that. Just because someone did it doesn't mean it should be allowed. —gorgan_almighty 16:08, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
          • I guess I'd rather people put their biases on the table. I'll be voicing opposition to adminship/Bureaship/Arbship for that user baesd on that comment, should that user ever come up for any of those things. That's better than the user manufacturing some excuse and people not knowing how they really felt.++Lar: t/c 17:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
• I mostly agree with User:Lar's comments. #1 is good, #3 is redundant, and #4 is unenforceable. As for #2, I agree that vote stacking is usually bad, but there shouldn't be anything about it in the userbox rules, because it's not a userbox-specific problem. If there's a consensus for outlawing it, then that should be a separate policy. Personally, I think #1 should be the only rule.
  • whoops, forgot to sign... Equalpants 16:29, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• How is #4 unenforcable? #4 can be quoted when someone nominates a user for banning "because he has userbox xxx on his user page" or an edit dispute arises because user A doesn't like user B editing the Muslim article because user B identifys as a Christian. The arbitrator can enact #4 in order to settle the dispute. #3 isn't really redundant because although it states already documented policy, it's doesn't hurt to restate it here, especially since userboxes offer a quick & easy way to attack a user for his beliefs. —gorgan_almighty 16:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Isn't "restated"=="redundant"? Doesn't restating rules just make the body of rules bigger? Wouldn't we be more well served with fewer, simpler, rules? They would be easier to understand for newcomers. Also, restatement means double maintenance if something changes, with all the attendant difficulty in finding all the restatements. All arguments against restatement I think. As for using #4 to settle disputes, in your example, user A doesn't have a case unless user B is introducing POV or unverifiable facts or whatever, no one owns articles. The userbox rule is not relevant to the case. Now, I applaud your efforts, but I'm not convinced. The more rules we add, the more reasons people have to WP:IAR. ++Lar: t/c 17:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Two possible situations where A's opinion has been influenced by B's userbox: either A explicitly states that he has been so influenced, or he keeps it to himself. In the first case, #4 is unnecessary because it's already wrong to dispute someone's edits for reasons like that. In the second case, #4 is unenforceable, because we can't see into A's head. You can't prove that someone has been influenced by something they've seen. Equalpants 18:22, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I, too, agree with Lar's points on this subject. Frankly, I also see no problem with canvassing. What we are trying to avoid is sockpuppetry, which is easily detectable. To prohibit canvassing is to say that "those users who are not embroiled in conflict already are not allowed to voice their opinion." I would very much welcome people coming to me and asking for my opinion on a subject currently in consideration, or to ask me to voice an opinion they already know. The reason for this is the size of my watchlist, and the fact that most of my edits take me nowhere near the politics of wikipedia. I suppose that means that I am condoning wikipedia "politicians," but we have already arrived at that place. We in fact have wikipedia paramilitary. The answer to this problem is not to forbid canvassing or expression of opinion, but to work with both sides to find commonality they can agree on. Avriette 20:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
• I honestly feel that you are against the idea of any regulation, rather than my proposals in particular. Can we at least agree that the "What userboxes are" clauses are good? —gorgan_almighty 18:40, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • On the contrary, I am against your proposals for the specific reasons that I have given above: redundancy and unenforceability. (If I was against the idea of any regulation, I would have said that in the first place, rather than taking the time to make specific objections.) I agree that the "What userboxes are" clauses are good, as well as "What userboxes are not" clause #1. Equalpants 19:00, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I guess I should chime in too. I'm not against regulation, rules, process, procedures etc, where they make sense. The "what userboxes are" section seems spot on, clearly userboxes are all those things. But I'm not sure where it goes. Is it prefatory on the policy page to the statement of policies? Where I am coming from in critiquing and questioning the "are not" parts is that simple, clear, and consistent rules and policies are easier to adhere to, easier to apply, easier to enforce, and perceived as fairer than complex, unclear, or inconsistent ones. What I see now with WP in general is a confusing welter of rules, policies, guidelines, proposed guidelines, informal defacto rules, admins doing IAR end runs and etc. This is not the place for a general rant but I've ranted already that reducing complexity and increasing consistency will get more buyin and less need for end runs. That's not a critique of your efforts by any means. In an ideal world the WP:Five Pillars would be all that is needed, but apparently we do need more. As little more as possible would be the preference. Sorry for the long comment! Hope it helps. ++Lar: t/c 20:31, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• Here is an example of a situation where #4 would be useful: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 January 16#Template:User Sock Puppet. —gorgan_almighty 10:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

How do user boxes help make a better encyclopedia?

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)

The only way any group of diverse editors can hope to achieve a NPOV is if they have a pretty good understanding of each others' points of view, biases, backgrounds, predilictions, etc. Userboxes make that easy, by automatically serving up the most popular categories and inviting people to put an attractive colorful emblem on their self-description. The only better way to make sure that editors understand each others' POV would be to give people a manditory survey (the results of which would probably end up looking a lot like userboxes, only with scales with floating-point values and therefore much more confusing) but that would discourage new editors. The voluntary userbox system seems like the best of all possible situations along those lines. James S. 19:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes when I see that someone is a Democrat or Republican or whatever on their use page, I also look to see if that POV is reflected in their edits. This helps me spot POV and NPOV editors. Howard Zinn, in the introduction of his book A People's History of the United States states that every historian has a POV, it is just that most of them are not honest about what it is. I have heard people complain about Wikipedia by saying that some articles are writen with a POV. I say to them, Yes, that is exactly what makes Wikipedia better than any other encyclopedia. It is possible to discern what the POV of an article is. Talk pages and edit histories are rich with this information, and Userboxes add another layer to this. With other encyclopedias there is no easy mechanism to tell what the point of view of an article is. I have learned as much or more from the debates on talk pages than I have from the articles that were being discussed because I was able to get an understanding of the different points of view of the editors and the conflicting opinions. This is part of the beauty of Wikipedia. We talk about NPOV as being some sort of absolute truth, as if the articles will be totally neutral. I think this is the wrong interpretation of NPOV. In my view, NPOV is a process of making POV apparent. -- Samuel Wantman 11:03, 14 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)

I'd like to add a bit to Lawyer2b's comment. I think nobody has considered here that userboxes can be a unifying factor in the community. Several times users have come to my talk page to ask me for information, (as an example) about firearms. Recently, I was wandering through userspace, and found that there are several users who are in fact for gun control (whereas I am not). One of the nice features of the wikipedia is I can collaborate on articles with other people who do not share the same viewpoint sa I do. I have run into this several times in the past, and feel that each time, the resolution has been amicable. While I am not in favor of wearing my politics on my sleeve, I appreciate that others are willing to do so. It means I know who to talk to when I have a question (such as somebody opposed to the "house of Saud"), or want a counterpoint to something I've written. I could speculate as to why people are so opposed to userboxes, but I think this fundamental truth has been missed (or ignored). Avriette 20:16, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I completely disagree with the notion that seeing someone's political or ideological stand is helpful in spotting a POV editor. An article should stand on its own without knowledge of the writer's personal beliefs. You should be able to understand whether an article is NPOV without knowing the author's beliefs. That's what multiple source documents and verification is for. And, indeed, understanding the author's beliefs my actually skew your interpreation of the article and cause you to read a POV slant that does not otherwise exist. For example, you may read an article about, say, American involvement in Iraq, and wonder if it's NPOV. You read, one of the editor's User Page and see that he/she states, "This user is a supporter of George W. Bush." Might that influence your view of the article? Yes! Should it? No! Let the article stand on its merit. In my opinion, the editor was silly to state his personal opinion, as any journalist would be, but use the cited references and the writing itself to judge the POV/NPOV of the article, not the author's User Page. Crunch 19:25, 16 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)

No point in categorizing

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. Radiant_>|< 23:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The point (and I'm not advocating for or against) is that it links all these users to higher level categories of Wikipedians. This adds a little more visibility to userboxes and groups of likeminded editors. What I find troubling is that these templates end up on other pages that then end up in the categories. --Samuel Wantman 10:43, 14 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)

- - - (squeak) - - -

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:

• What does it mean to have a "public face" in in a virtual organization? What are the purposes of a "public face", the benefits, the price?
• What is the emotional cost of a given (userpage) policy? Can this reduce or even negate the purely technical organizational benefit of the policy? How? In what circumstances? How can one know?
• What other organizations have faced some simulcrum of these challanges? What worked, what didn't, and why? Can any of these lessons be applied to Wikipedia?

But even these questions exist in a larger framework:

• Why does the group "people who work on Wikipedia" even exist? It doesn't make sense, does it? There's no pay, and after all there is already a decent encyclopedia. Answering that question -- the answer to be multifaceted, I am sure -- might be the first step toward beginning to answer the question of what policies and structures (userpage and other) are most likely to be best.
• I haven't seen much discussion of it, but it seems that WP is under stress from an influx of new users, and that this issue is a manifestation of that stress. Is it necessary to fight out that issue on this line (userboxes)? And quickly? (I'm not saying it's not; I don't know. I'm not even in this fight; but I would hope that those who are do understand what the fight is partly about, in the larger sense.)

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)

User page disclaimer

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)

That seems reasonable to me. Is there any reason talk pages shouldn't have such a disclaimer? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:37, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I think a better notice would be: "This is a talk page. Any and all opinions expressed here are the opinions of the individuals in question, and not necessarily the opinions of the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikipedia Encyclopaedia." I'm not a lawyer; suggestions welcome here, or preferably, my talk page. — Ian Manka ^{Questions? Talk to me!} 14:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

"Traditional wiki values"?

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)

How big is the problem?

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)

Have you looked at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia#Position? Someone, I presume in the interest of completeness, has created userboxes for Bureaucrats and ArbComs, and nominees for those positions. I don't see that anyone is using those. I wonder how many other userbox templates also have zero users? -- Dalbury^(Talk) 22:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't use images

[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. Radiant_>|< 11:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

This makes sense. There is a noticable delay when trying to load pages with lots of userboxes on them. We need to limit the number of images per page and currently lots of userboxes = lots of images. So we either need to have fewer boxes on user pages or remove the images from them. --CBD _☎ ^✉ 13:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

This applies to other templates, as well. I'm not sure where is the best place to bring it up, but we may need to develop a policy or guideline on the use of images in all templates (instruction creep rears its ugly head again). -- Dalbury^(Talk) 14:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

• That is true. I've made a similar request about stub templates, and have been removing images from a number of maintenance templates. Adding a line or two to Wikipedia:Templates may be useful. Radiant_>|< 15:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Would this mean that ALL image links not used in articlespace really ought to be delinked? Even things like barnstars, the guideline/policy/rejected symbols, etc? How bad is it? Yikes! ++Lar: t/c 15:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm sure that users can have a few images on their user page. However, userbox templates are a way of adding lots of images to lots of user pages; userpages with over a dozen userboxen are far too common these days. This also means that people should refrain from putting images in their signature, which also adds lots of images to lots of pages. Finally, I'm not sure why the text "this page is policy" needs an icon. Radiant_>|< 15:59, 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)

• Okay Brion has basically said not to worry about it...."Generally, you should not worry much about little things like templates and "server load" at a policy level. If they're expensive, we'll either fix it or restrict it at a technical level; that's our responsibility. --Brion 01:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Removing pictures

Like Johnleemk is saying, deleting the user boxs doesn't going to make them dissapear. That said any effort to get rid of the boxes is useless. If you want to start a policy of banning pictures(JPEG) on user boxes, that is understandable, but trying to go and delete them all is a waste of time, and no I don't care what Jimbo says about this --T-rex 05:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Deleting all images on userboxes is a terrible idea! I support the disallowing of copyrighted images on userboxes (because that is outside of fair use) but all images? An image in a box does not harm wikipedia. --Shell 05:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Proposed policy on userboxes#Don't use images. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but where is this so-called server load? Ever since I have joined, I have been on every day and never seen this. Hmm, maybe this is just another excuse to simplify userboxes and eventually get rid of them.... Hmm. I wonder. --Shell 14:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I do remember that fairly recently (in the last month or two) images were very slow to load or not loading at all, until new servers were brought on line. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 15:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I remember the same incident as Dalbury, but I don't support removing images from userboxes either, unless the devs collectively agree it's a problem (which they appear to not have done, as per the discussion on the pump). Johnleemk | Talk 15:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm only for deleting the images because they supposivelly slow down the servers, otherwise I have no problem with them --T-rex 06:10, 22 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)

I'm ambivalent about the use of images; on the one hand, server load problems are a concern, and userboxes are pretty low on the priority list. On the other hand, the long-term solution is more and better hardware, and easy-to-customize user pages make WP more fun and indirectly contribute to the goal of encyclopedia creation. Like Johnleemk, I have to say I'm against removing the images unless the devs as a group decide it needs to be done.--ragesoss 23:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

The impression I get from Brion is that, in his words, "this is not a policy issue." Being a software engineer, I don't feel that these sorts of things should be implemented by policy. If something is harmful to a process or asset (such as a server or disk), it is necessary to protect it with software -- not trust that the users will not violate policy. That having been said, if resizing the image is such a big deal, there are better ways of doing it than we are presently using (such as photon). I would first look at attempting to fix the software, rather than prevent a certain behavior from happening. If that were unsuccessful, we could then look at implementing a fix for the problem in software (as opposed to optimization, which is different). Avriette 23:16, 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)

Note from Jimbo

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)

Absolutely...we should never divide ourselves by any kind of faction and the political-religious userboxes are banners that only help to polarize the community.--MONGO 11:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed! I had already removed any userboxes from my user page that even hinted at a viewpoint. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to try removing user categories from these political/religious/etc userboxes. This categorization is probably the worst aspect of userboxes and serves little purpose other than to allow people to identifies other users with a certain POV. Carbonite | Talk 14:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:User Infobox is another alternative along these lines... basically it allows the same sort of information to be displayed in a standardized format, but since it is all just displayed text there are no categories linked to it. --CBD _☎ ^✉ 15:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You can put images in Template:User Infobox, and the images and/or messages can still be divisive. There are other reasons to not use images in userboxes, but those are being discussed elsewhere. I think Jimbo is right, we need to encourage everybody to stop using userboxes that reflect political, religious or other polemical viewpoints. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 15:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Um, people can put divisive images or messages directly on their user pages too... and did for a long time before userboxes came along. Ditto for potentially divisive user categories. Both absolutely ought to be discouraged, but the development which has prompted recent concern on these issues is the userbox+categorization dynamic. Userboxes effectively serve as 'advertising' which automatically puts people into categories which can then be used to promote factionalism. Carbonite's idea of removing categories from userboxes might help with that, but is likely to be resisted and people looking to organize factions can still check 'What links here' from the userboxes. The User Infobox gets rid of the categories and uniquely identifying templates in a self-selecting way. Can people still put factional images/messages in them? Sure, just as they can directly on the user page. Working to reduce that is a separate issue which goes back to the first userpages and forward for the life of the project. The 'User Wikipedian2' (and slightly less 'in your face' 'User Wikipedian') templates Tony suggests are 'advertising' for the non-ideological approach along those lines. As is Jimbo's message. --CBD _☎ ^✉ 16:03, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Anybody wondering what to replace those political and polemical badges with: Template:User Wikipedian2 --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah...ship it over to Wikipedia:WikiProject userboxes let em munch on it for awhile. I have to agree that Dalbury is correct on Jimbo's comment...it's the devisive userboxes that have to go.--MONGO 15:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Nice. I've put the following on my user and talk pages:

Jimbo Wales has asked that we consider removing all userboxes expressing a political, religious or, more generally, polemical point of view from our user pages. Please see Wikipedia talk:Proposed policy on userboxes#Note from Jimbo.

-- Dalbury^(Talk) 15:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but the last time I checked, this is what userboxes are for! Userboxes are here to categorize users not to be simply a label. Christians put up christian userboxes so that they will be known as christian! Am I the only one that sees this? --Shell 15:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, of course that's what they are for. And that's why they should be discouraged. Here we are Wikipedians. That means a commitment to neutrality and leaving an attitude of representing a particular faction should be left at the door. And it isn't just the problem of existing users, but rather what signal we are sending to newcomers in the community. Ideally, we want newcomers to come in and feel that, wow, here is the first place on the Internet where people are discussing and finding compromises about how to present purely factual information and leaving the POV warring outside. Gee, the conversation is so calm and rational and grounded in facts, you can barely even tell what the participants own views are! Well, that's our tradition, but it is slipping away, and userboxes are a part of the problem.--Jimbo Wales 16:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

That we should all leave our POV at the door is an ideal to be strived for. It's not something most of us are every going to be able to live up to 100%. So if someone puts a clearly visible marker on their page to show that they're a Christian or a Marxist or a native speaker of Basque or whatever, surely all they're doing is flagging up where they're coming from, issuing a warning that their writing may be biased in certain specific directions, and thus giving us all information so that we can better weight up their words. Mongvras 01:40, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I am a Jain. Do you think I will treat a user differently if I see that he is a Muslim? You notice that what you are doing is removing individuality, right? This is too alike to a communist nation for me. You are persecuting individuality and I can not support any such site, foundation or person that does this. --Shell 16:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Heh... establishing individuality by identifying oneself with a group. The world is a very strange place. :] --CBD _☎ ^✉ 16:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

How do you identify yourself? With where you were born? With what gender you are? What your name is? Your age? Your job? These are groups. You are identifying yourself with a group. That is how people work. We want to be with other people like us. That is why we group. --Shell 16:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Conrad. Nice to meet ya. :] --CBD _☎ ^✉ 16:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

This is something that has had me worried for a while now. My concern started when the first time I looked at Jimbo's user page a while back there was a photo of Che Guevara there. I can't say if Jimbo endorsed this, but the whole connotation disturbed me. My wife grew up in the Soviet Union, and the stories she can tell makes one really appreciate what harm communist ideals, such as those promoted by Che, really entailed. The removal of personal identity and substitution of the state is central to communist philosophy. Some of Jimbo's rhetoric of we are first and foremost Wikipedians seems to echo in a similar manner. Something else that caught my attention was his posting on the category page for Wikipedians by politics. Note that he posted a comment on the main category page rather than on the talk page. Done by anyone else this would have been considered highly inappropriate. This is another hallmark of communism. Those who help to make the rules have more latitude in breaking them. If contributing to Wikipedia means sacrificing one's personal identity then I for one will have to direct my energies elsewhere. With some of the behaviour of late on Wikipedia these comments may get me denounced, but I would prefer to be a dissident than to stand silent. --StuffOfInterest 02:17, 22 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)

I think it ran afoul of Wikipedia:Civility and was never heard from again. :] --CBD _☎ ^✉ 16:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

What was that Ben Franklin quote again? Cjmarsicano 16:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

"Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One." -Franklin --CBD _☎ ^✉ 16:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

That's not the one I was thinking of. Something to do with giving up liberty? Cjmarsicano 18:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You may be thinking of

Thoſe who would give up Essential Liberty to purchaſe a little Temporary Safety, deſerve neither Liberty nor Safety.

See also Franklin Quoted by Minsky. Michael Slone (talk) 00:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

How about "okay, thank you for starting Wikipedia Mr Wales and putting in so many years of your life to making it the site it is today, and I don't mind acceding to your humble request because it's not really asking much more than to stand in harmony with other Wikipedians"? No? Bugger. I thought we were on a winner there. - Mark 16:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia a fascist state now - or just as evil, a branch of Fox News? I don't read from rightist scripts, thank you. —CJ Marsicano 16:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The disrespect shown to Jimbo's exceedingly polite request appalls me. [[Sam Korn]] 20:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, CJ Marsicano. Wikipedia is about freedom. This is freedom. You are opressing freedom as well as individuality. --Shell 16:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Noone prevents you from stating your beliefs on your user page. The current dispute is about if we want wikipedia to become a webcommunity of teenagers with colorful little boxes or if wikipedia is about writing an encyclopedia. For the second, a user box stating that you are christian/muslim/pagan or whatever is useless if you don't contribute to articles about the topic. And if you contribute, everyone can derive this easier from your membership in a wiki project or the history of the articles. In sum: it's not about freedom, it's about good or bad taste. --84.153.123.74 16:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll gladly continue to contribute articles, but Wikipedia is not getting one red cent from me in donations until the Kelly Martins of the Wikiworld permanently mind their own goddamn business regarding what goes on user pages. —CJ Marsicano 16:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I propose that no donations are given to wikipeida until this opression is stopped. --Shell 16:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

A little more civility would likely lead to a more productive discussion. Carbonite | Talk 16:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Leaving what is on our userpages alone would definitely lead to everyone getting back to the business of helping write an encylopedia. Cjmarsicano 16:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

If you want your user page to remain "left alone", why are you using templates? Subst all your userbox if you want a stable user page. Carbonite | Talk 16:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

If you'd let us in on this little secret, maybe we all might. It seems a hell of a lot more reasonable and realistic than Mr. Wales' suggestion. Cjmarsicano 16:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'm talking about template substitution, which expands a template into code. Since the template is no longer transcluded, the code on your user page would be stable and unaffected by changes to the template. You can read more about it here. Carbonite | Talk 16:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You're free to not donate, but the Board/Jimbo is free not to pay for the upkeep of the servers hosting your userboxes. They're free to ban you from using their private property. People who are calling this "communist" are very good at ignoring one's property rights. ;) Johnleemk | Talk 16:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

People who call this "communist" are using the wrong terminology. It's actually fascism. You know, like the Third Reich or the current Bush Administration. Cjmarsicano 16:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm! Jimbo asks very politely for help in changing the culture of Wikipedia, and you call that fascism? I probably will regret saying this, but I can't help noticing who is being civil and who isn't in this discussion. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 17:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm? The "fascist" remark wasn't directed at Mr. Wales - I was being more general. I was only correcting Johnleemk (who is otherwise a pretty cool guy, and who I've had the pleasure of dealing with in a mediation several weeks ago.) As for any alleged civility issues, I've been holding my tongue quite nicely and only listed the "Fuck, no" option earlier to make a point (and a joke). And no, I wasn't trying to disrupt Wiki to make a point either. Sheesh. Cjmarsicano 18:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake. I thought this discussion was about Jimbo's request. I obviously missed something. As for your reply to Jimbo being a joke, humor doesn't filter very well through the Internet. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 18:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy. What Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia Foundation Board says goes. There is no innate right to edit Wikipedia, no innate right to "fairness" on Wikipedia, no innate right to even having a say on what goes on your userpage, beyond what the Board/Jimbo allows us to. They've given us a free hand in most things, and I don't see what's the real big fuss here. (Note: I still have a political userbox on my webpage, but it's never been categorised, and AFAIK, I'm the only one who uses it.) Johnleemk | Talk 16:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, then, maybe some major changes need to be made to the WFB then? Cjmarsicano 16:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, if wikipedia is not a democracy, we'll remove all votes, remove all admins except jimbo, disallow expression, elect jimbo as the permanent leader, ban all disagreeing users and make it a paid service. --Shell 16:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy and never has been. For the most part it's gone along pretty well and people are given a good deal of leeway with what we can have on our user pages—which, really, belong to the project, and not any individual user. Jimbo is the benevolent leader who mostly doesn't step in unless something is really really important to him and even then usually he only makes polite requests. This was a pretty polite request and it might be better to discuss why you're so strongly opposed to it instead of reacting so harshly. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:57, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Read what I said before. Since wikipedia "is not a democracy," follow my suggestions. --Shell 16:59, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I did read it. You seem to have a mistaken idea of what it means to not be a democracy; it doesn't imply any particular way of running things at all, other than that one method in particular doesn't necessarily govern everything. Why not follow my suggestion—and state why is this so important to you? You've claimed it's oppressing your freedoms, but I'm wondering what freedoms you thought you had that are being oppressed. No one is asking you not to be a Christian or a Jain or a Muslim or a Write In Mickey Mouse for President party member or whatever you are. No one is saying that you can't say that you are. What is being said is that the standard-looking boxes categorizing and identifying users were disrupting the process of building the project as users used it to factionalize, and that since they seem to be counterproductive, it would be best if people would remove them. (I find it interesting that this is so important to you, as your signature doesn't even link to a userpage!) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 17:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I will, once again, put this very simply. If this is not a democracy, remove all votes. --Shell 17:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Shell, not a democracy != dictatorship != autocracy. Just because something is not a democracy does not automatically make it an autocracy. Jimbo is our autocrat, but he gives us a free hand most of the time to run ourselves. He doesn't interfere unless he feels he has a reason to; a hands-off benevolent dictator, if you will. Jimbo does not want to make every decision, so he allows us to vote. It's that simple. Johnleemk | Talk 04:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

This is opression. Also, we do not have a free hand when we are FORCED to not show any individuality or pride. --Shell 05:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

But you are here voluntarily. How can there be oppression in a voluntary association? -- Dalbury^(Talk) 05:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, WP:NOT a democracy. All our liberty on Wikipedia is given to us by Jimbo/the Board, and it can be revoked at any time. Jimbo gives us a free hand most of the time, not all the time. (See Wikipedia:Free speech — our only rights are the right to fork, and the right to leave.) And if the only way you know to express individuality or pride is through userboxes, you're a very sad person. Johnleemk | Talk 05:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, and this userbox is also cool and relevant. I've got it on my userpage already. Johnleemk | Talk 06:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

If you support me and cjmarsicano's view, add {{user:Cjmarsicano/UDUIW}} to your userpage. --Shell 17:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

• This may not be a democracy, in a country-sense, but last time i checked, it was partially. I call for all you sheep to following the group - this is not a dictatorship! I like my political views both on my user page and in real-life. We go on and on about not offending someone but, to tell you the truth, this is getting pretty close to offending me! I like showing a point of view, thats the sort of thing we fought for in WW2 - freedom. If you like free wikipedia where we can have discussions like this, then support me and Sh in this democratic movement (because Wikipedia is a democracy in a partial sense, otherwise freedom to gain knowledge and discuss would not be present). I'd go into a Winston Churchill-type speech right now, but I dont have that much time or vision as that late, great man did. - • Dussst • ^{T | C} 18:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this is not a democracy in any sense. It is an encyclopedia. Yes, speech should be free, but only in the sense that the encyclopedia seeks to be neutral - and so neither excludes not reflects any individual point of view. As to the rest, it is not a matter of 'free speech' vs 'opressed speech', but rather that all speech must be seeking the ends of an NPOV encyclopedia. If you want to express yourself otherwise, or be an individual for its own sake - that's OK, but perhaps an encyclopedia project may not be the best place to do it. (comments toned down per TS below)--Doc ^ask? 18:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you decided to grow up in those 25 minutes. I was going to do a personal attack on you regarding your picture of Nixon, but I'm above that. Anyway: Userboxes appear on user pages. User pages are exempt from NPOV - so userboxes do not need to be NPOV. You say it needs to be NPOV because it's an encyclopedia. I dont remember looking on someone's user page for research and such. Its just my opinion that if you don't live in the USSR, you can do what you want in terms of Human rights. Political views should be able to be displayed, thats called freedom. Regarding the "attracting the wrong people" thing, a user's userpage isnt usually the first thing an unregistered vandal looks at. Nor does a good person get turned into a vandal by looking at a user's political views. They usually come to Wikipedia with the intent to vandalise and disrupt prior to looking at a user's political views on their userpage. If you get red if this sort of userbox people, as Tony says below, will use the subst version, or just type it out. Does it make any difference how it is displayed? The views will probably still be there in one way or another - • Dussst • ^{T | C} 19:58, 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. --ʀ6ʍɑʏ89 04:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, here's my support for various userboxes that show a religious/political/etc affiliations; they help identify potential sources of bias for a writer. I have put the Roman Catholic userbox on my page, both to show I can be (potentially) helpful to consult if a Catholic POV or expertise is required; but also to alert those on articles such as abortion (to which I am a regular contributor to) that I hold a Catholic POV. It gives them the opportunity to challenge what I write, and forces me to insure that any contributions I make where a Catholic POV could potentially bias my writing is firmly backed up with sound research and good sources. What's the harm in that? In my opinion, it only helps to limit POV contribution to articles.

In terms of professional knowledge - for me to identify myself as a schooled mathematician does not mean I am somehow better than a self-taught mathematician, but it does mean I can contribute with a certain level of confidence, knowledge, and resources to back me up; this is useful for those looking for experts on a topic.

It has also helped me to identify other users of similar affiliations, so that I know of other users who might be interested in helping to start new pages based on similar interests or areas of expertise.

As for boxes that state things like "this user thinks that George Bush is a weenie" or "Hitler was my hero" and the like - obviously there is a concern for pointless userboxes, but it has seemed to me that negative feedback from fellow Wikipedians has limited their use, and quickly identifies the user as a (potentially) non-serious and flaky contributor - and on second thougt, that's not such a bad thing either!DonaNobisPacem 20:05, 23 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)

User box commentary from Jimbo's page

Some interesting stuff from Jimbo's talk page. There are a couple of other threads going on the issue but much of it is just flaming and this talk page is already enormous. Marskell 17:52, 21 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)

Go forth and spread this wisdom my friend. :-) I agree with you completely. The classic tradition of Wikipedia is that I do not know the politics or religion of major contributors, and the better their ability to write good encyclopedia articles, the less I am able to guess it. And honestly, it doesn't matter.

My hope for a solution is one of gentle kindness and a request of people who are overusing them. Rather than force our culture down the throats of newbies, we must educate them. Listen, we must say, here we are Wikipedians and while we acknowledge that we all bring biases, we do everything we can to minimize them here.

I should add, because the question comes up in these discussions, that I see nothing wrong with someone telling about themselves on their userpage in a thoughtful comment. It should ideally be of the form "I am active in my local church, and hold strong beliefs on certain religious and moral issues. I try hard to be sure that my beliefs do not lead to biased editing, and if you ever feel that I am pushing a particular perspective, please let me know kindly, because I really don't want to do that." That's a lot better than a userbox. --Jimbo Wales 15:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm rather of two minds on the whole userbox thing. On the one hand, I see some value to giving some indication of "where you're coming from" regarding any personal attributes or beliefs of yours that might potentially affect your viewpoint and help others understand why you're doing whatever it is you're doing. On the other hand, I see the problems, current and potential, which arise from people using this site as a place to stake out positions and go into battle behind the flag of their own belief system. I also see a lot of silliness in the way userboxes are being used by some people who seem to want to collect them like stamps or baseball cards, filling their pages with a huge array of sometimes-redundant, sometimes-contradictory boxes. I've seen some userpages with several dozen different boxes expressing some nuance or flavor of the concept that they regard themselves as transgendered; OK, I "got it" the first time. Lest anyone think I'm picking on the transgendered, there are plenty of other groups that do similar things; some right-wing nationalists have several dozen boxes expressing variations on the viewpoint that their country is the greatest in the world, their political leaders are always right, their wars are always just, and their enemies are all evil. All of this is rubbing it on way too thick; on the other hand, I wouldn't really object to somebody giving a brief indication of their nationality, religion, and political and sexual preference (preferably along the lines of what they support, not what they hate). By the way, my only userbox besides the original and uncontroversial Babel boxes is one indicating my Myers-Briggs INTJ personality; is that considered biased now too? *Dan T.* 16:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I think this is is an excellent commentary on the subtleties of the issue.--Jimbo Wales 17:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Death to the INTJ'r infidels! We of the INFJ faction are the only True Wikipedians! :] --CBD _☎ ^✉ 17:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

A wise man once said:

Diplomacy consists of combining honesty and politeness. Both are objectively valuable moral principles. Be honest with me, but don't be mean to me. Don't misrepresent my views for your own political ends. And I'll treat you the same way.

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)

See my suggestion below. I'd like people to consider substing the userboxes and then editing the words to say something more precise and personal about their opinion. There is nothing wrong with stating your opinion on your userpage. The cause for concern over userboxes is not that they permit self-expression, but that the manner in which they encourage the self-application of facile labels and encourage factionalism and division. I'd like to see people feel free to express their opinions, without doing so in a potentially damaging way. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for an interim compromise

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)

Here, here! :-) As the creator of the Anti-UN, Anti-ACLU, and "This user supports the legalization of all drugs for adults" userboxes, I whole heartedly second Tony's suggestion. I will forthwith begin "de-templating" my userpage and simply copy the userbox code onto it along with any modifications that would more accurately express my point of view. I think this is an excellent compromise. Lawyer2b 23:50, 22 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! WikieZach 20:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

• Yeah, Wikizack! Great idea. Insulting userboxes are bad but ones such as "this user supports the united states libertarian party" or "this user is catholic" are okay!--HistoricalPisces 20:44, 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)

• I say, if someone wants to say something political or identifying about their beliefs, political leanings, religion, bias, then they can just write it out. I am opposed to bumpersticker like userboxes that categorize people...we are here ot write an encyclopedia...continuation of the use of these polarizing userboxes is in direct violation with the core concepts of NPOV, and do nothing to add to our credibility that we are doing our best to promote a neutral, fact based reference source.--MONGO 22:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Individuality of expression always looks more meaningful than branding, and this becomes more pronounced the more a subject is deemed profound by an individual. While I think that mixing ontological and so on prefrences alongside cola ones in pre-made userboxes works to cheapen those values and smacks of mediocrity on a few levels (though, I've seen great inventive and otherwise noteworthy userboxes), that is not the issue. The whole and-now-you're-in-that-ub-category phenomenon, when was there consensus for introducing that? It's seemingly underhanded, to out of the blue have it appear in the category space; to have demands for this category space use as an inalienable right. El_C 00:10, 22 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. --Shell 00:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Or a vote before it's added (onto non-subst category space, that is)? It seems like a needless expension of energy that otherwise could be chanlled productively. Whether pre or post, we're faced with tens of AfDs/approval votes. Is this what we want to do with our time here? El_C 00:53, 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:

I've worked as a professional programmer for 25 years, and have professional level C, C++, Perl, Oracle and PHP, and for recreational purposes I prefer lisp and my contributions on the tool server here are in the lisp dialect Scheme.

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)

I explain my involvement with PHP and web development on a subpage of my userpage, but I also have a userbox stating that yes, I program in PHP, etc. I think this is good, because it helps the casual skimmer who might be wanting to find someone who can help. Userboxes also help brighten the page up a bit, and can easily be used without having to dive into the finer points of CSS and HTML. I think userboxes are okay for acting as a quick and dirty description of the person, as long as they are backed up by more nuanced explanations in the userspace (e.g. I state I am opposed to ketuanan Melayu, and explain why in my userpage). Johnleemk | Talk 02:05, 23 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:

• Wikipedian Categories should be strictly limited, no religious or political categories at all, or other categories with likely and proximate potential for POV-user collection. (But anything silly or pointless should be allowed, if not harmful. Offensive categories should be allowed if they don't have likely potential for POV-user collection. Grossly offensive categories can go to CfD as needed.)
• Userpage Templates should be limited under exactly the same rule, because of the "what links here" feature.
• But userboxes themselves should be almost unlimited. They are converted from templates, instead userbox creators place the code of the userbox directly a Userbox: page, in a section, users who want the userbox edit the section and cut-n-paste it into their userpages (this is just as easy as subst'ing). For example, see Wikipedia:Userboxes/Education/United States. Just convert this into sections and replace (say) {{user UChicago}} with the code. (Details of how this can be set up to defeat "what links here" or inclusion of a section (using #) and how to otherwise manage this are straightforward, I won't list them here. Userboxes that violate this (e.g. by being alone on a page etc.) are speedied.)
• No user structure, category or otherwise, should be speedied, ever, except for libel, copyvio, and pornography. Herostratus 05:31, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

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)

If someone were stupid enough to publicly announce felonious or otherwise reprehensible behavior on Wikipedia, or adopts it just to be obnoxious then I say they should. It makes them easier to arrest, prosecute, ban and otherwise keep a tight lid on. A group of ten, hundred, or even a thousand fascists stupid enough to announce their presence and activities is easy to stop. It's the unannounced, secretive, conspiratorial group that numbers in the twos and threes that are the ones that can royally screw things up.

So I say again, for about the billionth time (in addition to others): let's stop stifling freedom of speech and association over silly Godwin's Law scenarios, in which anyone who expresses an opinion to which someone takes exception has to be tarred and feathered with the charge of opening the gates to Nazism.

And indeed, there are racists and fascists on Wikipedia, who seek to make their sick ideologies palatable - see Sam Spade and his racialism nonsense, which thankfully enough people saw through before he became a member of ArbCom. But let's not mince words: Wiki's racist and fascist fringe aren't reprehensible because they adopt userboxes; they're reprehensible because they're racists and fascists! So let's not respond by being vigilant against userboxes - let's respond by being vigilant against racist and fascist trolls. --Daniel 15:05, 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)

Articles are not censored. Nobody ever said anything about not censoring other parts of Wikipedia, especially those not directly related to building an encyclopedia. Furthermore, when you click on penis or pornography, you generally know what to expect, especially given the context (i.e. "some little boys like to masturbate in public, which is a socially unacceptable practice"). I shouldn't have to worry about being grounded by my parents or fired by my boss or hauled in front of the principal for trying to warn User:I like to put porno on my userpage about vandalism/our NPOV policy/something else. Johnleemk | Talk 14:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Back to Jimbo's Note

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.

As long as it's voluntary, i volunteer not to remove my opinions from my userpage. And i call for anyone else who wants to express themselves within Wikipedia law to do so - • Dussst • ^{T | C} 15:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

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)

These discussions tend to attract people who have made their minds up, but many users haven't really thought about the issues. A polite approach asking a user known to you personally, who has already worked with you and respects your judgement, is all that is needed. If he decides to keep his political and religious userboxes, that's okay. If he has been presented with a request to change, then that's enough. Repeated hundreds of times propagating through the wiki, such polite, reasonable suggestions can change the culture. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll just do what I can, then. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 00:33, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Tony, you've touched on a big problem we're having here: People are discussing with their minds made up already. If we are to contact users who are not part of this discussion, I think it is important that we encourage open-mindedness and try to avoid addressing this issue as a dischotomy. ~MDD4696 01:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Jimbo's request is for a voluntary campaign. We should emphasize that this is simply asking people to consider avoiding userboxes of a polemical nature. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 02:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I've started to compile a list of acqaintances (people whose user or talk pages I've edited at some time in the past year) alongside notes on whether they use political or religious userboxes. The intention is to identify those with whm I have a reasonably good relationship and who use userboxes, but perhaps haven't yet considered the effects that widespread use might have on the culture f Wikipedia.

• User:Tony Sidaway/Jimbo's request

What I found rather surprising was that, of 134 users so far idenified, only a little over ten percent have any political or religious userboxes at all. Still that makes things easier for me. I don't have so much work to do.

I've already had my first success. One person who noticed what I was doing contacted me saying that he agrees with what I am doing and has got rid of the one political userbox on his page. I have asked him to spread the word. We're changing the culture of Wikipedia, one user at a time. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 05:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

For the record, are you classifying "Trusts Jimbo" as religion, politics, or both? (I don't ask entirely frivolously, as if we start counting "wikibeliefs" userboxes, the count would appear to go significantly up (support of this, zero tolerance of that, etc.) Alai 07:09, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we can make a real distinction between userboxes that support positions on how to manage Wikipedia and userboxes that push POVs related to the content of articles. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 11:52, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That's two separate distinctions being smooshed together. What's pertinent to articles, and what's pertinent to meta-content is fairly distinguishable (albeit with some overlap); what's "positions on managing" and what's organised factionalism, in either case, is almost certainly going to be fuzzier, and based on generalising from specific instances, etc. Alai 16:57, 26 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)

So isn't "Trusts Jimbo" in that category too? (And one can pack debates about Jimmy Wales all one likes...) Alai 07:29, 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 agree. I think you're both adopting a responsible and innovative attitude towards polemical userboxes. I'm beginning to approach acquaintances who have such userboxes, to discuss Jimbo's appeal with them person-to-person, but actually I've encountered at least one other page like yours, John, where the owner has substed templates or created his own individual box (and why not?) I'm raising the question of whether the belief-based categories on one fellow's page are appropriate--I'll be happy enough it he at least considers the question, even if he rejects my line of reasoning.

I seem to recall being told that site traffic just about doubled in December in the wake of the high profile Seigenthaler affair, and as a result we have a huge number of newer editors who haven't yet found their bearings and have tended to import attitudes from non-wiki environments. It seems that most of the more extreme attitudes about userboxes reside in those recent newcomers, the kind of well-meaning but inexperienced people who brought us Supreme Court of Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:34, 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)

Yes, I did see the stick that Jimbo showed, but I think he would prefer that we work out a solution rather than having one imposed on Wikipedia. I would hope that if we ask editors to avoid using polemical userboxes, the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors will agree with us, and we can move on to building an NPOV encyclopedia without having to resort to new policies. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 17:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of what Jimmy plans to do next on this, the decategorisation and substing points are important, as if use of the template and category namespace is factored out, the issue simply becomes one of "what are people allowed to have on their user pages", which is a larger issue entirely. (And there's worse user page content out there than anything I've seen in userboxes.) And defining what "these userboxes" are is rather crucial, too. Tony S.'s "religion and politics" criterion is reasonably well-defined, but if the objective were to eliminate any declaration of partiality on any possible issue whatever, that could affect anything conceivable in the article space, that'd be altogether more open-ended. Alai 08:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think Jimbo may favor elimination of all userboxes so that there isn't any disagreement or vagueness as to which ones go and which ones stay...but my interpretation may be extreme and I certainly don't want to pretend to think I know what he fully means. I agree with both of you as well.--MONGO 09:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

That would be way too far, IMO. Userbox templates, maybe -- it can be argued that they have no place in the template namespace. However, it's not only blatantly unfair and ludicrous to ban a particular style of decorating one's userpage, but also unenforceable. Even if Jimbo wanted to eradicate all userboxes, it would be extremely troublesome enforcing this ruling without blocking almost the whole 'pedia. Johnleemk | Talk 10:22, 26 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)

I think you skipped the antecedent clause to what John said. There will be an issue either way, however; getting rid of all userboxes is a very large exercise, and certain to be even more controversial (not that I couldn't cope without mine); getting rid of some involves determining where to draw a line. IIRC correctly Jimmy Wales wanted rid of "political" and "polemical" userboxes; Tony is looking for political and religious ones. Another formulation would be, expressing an affirmative opinion on any controversial topic, as per the category of same. I say "opinion" as it's not clear to me that merely religiously-identifying userboxes (I'm a devout Catholic/lapsed Mormon/recovering Presbyterian/other) are at all to be equated with the hates/dislikes/likes/loves class. But grey areas, either way. Alai 16:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo first mentioned "political/religious/etc. userboxes", and then mentioned "[u]serboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature". As for religious userboxes, there were a couple of instances where editors who were using a "This user is Roman Catholic" userbox on their homepages were being solicited to support what could be termed an "official Catholic" position in a dispute over an article. I might add that some of the users contacted took offense at the tactic. In any case, that has raised concerns that userboxes identifying users as members of political or religious groups (no matter how benignly stated or intended) could be used to recruit large numbers of editors to swamp a vote or discussion. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 19:19, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd missed or forgotten the precise form of JW's first comment, thanks. I fully appreciate the nature of the potential and actual abuse here, but my point remains: this could be an issue with any userbox relating in any way to a controversial topic, and given the nature of wikipedia and controversy, that more or less means "any userbox whatsoever". (with admittedly greater or lesser degrees of likelihood). This'll be hard to make precise, especially if not everyone is working from the same basis for determining what is or isn't appropriate. Alai 20:01, 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)

I'm not at all sure what your criteria for "benign and uncontroversial" are, as your characterisations above, and the ones you're in practice edit/delete/move-warring over don't seem to tally. But that's by the by, and doesn't go to my original point: any number of userboxes are going to be "uncontroversial" in and of themselves, but are at least in theory going to usable in the way I outline above. In some cases, even including the languages ones. "Malignancy" may only be evident after the fact (though the RC one wouldn't have taken a supergenius to have spotted). In any case, I'm entirely in favour of the suggested "more flies with honey" approach (especially given the apparent alternatives), I simply think its objective is less than rigourously defined. BTW, I thought you said 10% used "problem" userboxes, not 10% used any at all. I'm curious as to what the total "uptake" is myself; if they're all categorised, that would provide a basis for a reasonable guestimate. Alai 05:33, 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)

Addendum: I just went and completed the C's and D's. Of 64 editors, I found one with a Jehovah's Witness userbox, one is an agnostic, one has a hand-coded UN userbox, one has a huge number of polemical userboxes, and one whose page is so cluttered that I cannot tell. So less than 10%. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that:

1. Having a userbox (whether subst'ed or not) identifying me as belonging to a certain political or religious group is no different from writing in prose on my user page that I belong to that political or religious group, or from adding myself to the appropriate subcategory of Category:Wikipedians.
2. Therefore, if it is undesirable to have a userbox on my user page that so identifies me, it is equally undesirable to say so in prose or to add the category.
3. There is virtually nothing one can say about oneself that will not be offensive to someone else. All user boxes and personal statements are potentially polemic. This includes the popular Babel boxes. (Example 1: The contention surrounding the wording of {{User en-4}}. Example 2: for a user from Northern Ireland to identify as a speaker of either Irish or Ulster Scots is many cases a polemic political statement.)
4. Therefore, although Jimbo merely suggested "removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same", the logical consequence of doing so is removing all personal information, including languages spoken, from our user pages and asking others to do the same.

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 agree with your logic. --Fang Aili 13:57, 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)

I have to come to your user page to read your userboxes too, but in no case do I "engage you as a person" on your user page, because your user page is still part of the virtual world, not the real world. No matter how many times or how carefully I read your Wikipedia user page, I have still never met you. The argument that userboxes make it easy to find users adhering to a specific belief, either by categories or by What Links Here is specious: it's just as easy to do a Google search to see which user pages contain the word "Anglican" as it is to view Category:Anglican Wikipedians or Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:User anglican. Back when I had userboxes, I did subst some of them and edit them to reflect me more accurately, but they categorized me just as much as they did unsubsted. --Angr 15:56, 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)

You're welcome, although I notice you haven't gotten rid of your userboxes yet. You yourself have put yourself into the cookie-cutter factions of Wikipedians with perfect User pages (a polemical category if I ever heard one), English speakers, French speakers, Spanish speakers, Latin speakers, Advogato users, Scheme users, Metawiki users, bloggers, Wikipedia review members, and (indirectly) administrators by having {{User recovery}} on your page. I also notice not a single one of your user boxes is substed. --Angr 16:22, 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)

You could suggest it, but if you did, you would no longer be assuming good faith. My point is that it's a very fuzzy line indeed between userboxes reflecting skills and those reflecting beliefs. Sticking to your page as an example, one could easily deduce that you believe the Romance languages are more worth learning than other languages, or that Scheme is a better programming language than its competitors. Those beliefs are no less exploitable than religious or political beliefs. But no worries, I won't be editing your user page to make it look like mine. --Angr 16:45, 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 don't see any strained comparisons in anything I've written. What I do see is an entirely arbitrary and artificial distinction someone's invented between "skill-based" and "belief-based" userboxes and an attempt to push the opinion "skill-based good, belief-based bad". In fact, while it is certainly true that some userboxes are more polemical than others, no userbox--or any other statement made about oneself--is entirely free of polemical potential. As for why I haven't taken up your offer to help make your user page "perfect" (as if such a thing as a perfect user page were attainable), that's chiefly because your vision of a perfect user page is obviously vastly different from mine. --Angr 17:30, 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)

this fighting is stupid

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)

Voting is evil, and doesn't reflect the true concensus of people as a whole. The problem with the userboxes is not necessarily that they're stating people's opinions, but that they slap a category onto a user page, allowing people to quickly group into voting blocs, and smaller cults of Wikipedians who will support a particular viewpoint, potentially against the project's aims. There's sufficient evidence that this has happened and will continue to do so. People writing their opinions into text isn't a particular problem. People wandering around with a red rubber stamp is. Rob Church (talk) 19:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Your Good Faith ends where mine begins?

This is the second time I personally encounter a single person, in the best style of the stereotypical dictators ("benevolent" or not), deciding how WP is run. The first time was when Raul pretty frankly stated that he has the final word on how FAC's look, period.

You may be the "owner" of Wikipeida (the final way of how things are decided is obviously how WP is run by the Wikimedia foundation), but your were-convincing ideals that WP is run by Consensus are being shattered one step at a time by your own action.

I don't know about others, but I am seriously reconsidering my dedication to the project. - Elvarg 20:08, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

So, Jimbo asking us to consider removing polemical userboxes from our user pages makes him a dictator? Funny, I don't it see it that way, although I am aware that he can act the dictator whenver he wants to, as he (and the Foundation) own Wikipedia. As for consensus, the majority of Wikipedians don't even bother to use userboxes, and judging from Tony Sidaway's statistics and my own much more limited look around, somewhere less than 10% of wikipedians use any userboxes of a political, religious, or other nature stating a belief potentially pertinent to the content of articles. A vocal minority does not equal consensus. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 21:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

If it's such a tiny percentage of people using userboxes, why is all this uproar occuring? If it was half of all users, it would be understandable. But less than 10%? Thats such a minority, its hardly worth bothering going through all this hassle. I think that the whole idea of free information should allow people to display their own views on their own user pages. If people get offended that easily, theres something wrong. Frankly, im sick of admins and other high level users strutting around deleting countless numbers of userboxes, without even considering a concensus.

• | Đܧ§§Ť | • ^{T | C} 20:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

This discussion is stupid. I'm moving on.

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? ~MDD4696 22:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

• Support. --Wikiacc (talk) 22:07, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Uh oh. I didn't mean to start a vote, just a note of support for Mdd4696's argument. Maybe the comment was too RFA-like in how it was written? --Wikiacc (talk) 21:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
• Ditto and Support - 3 weeks ago I proposed a policy. Then this whole argument degenerated into a mud-slinging farce, and it is not going anywhere. Give up. Deano (Talk) 23:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
• heh-I could see this was page was going no-where - thats why i concentrate my efforts at tfd. lol
• leave me a note on my talk page when you guys actually get a policy ready to vote - "ahem" discuss.--God of War 23:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
  • As God of War above, I'd eventually like to return and help develop a policy. Right now, however, I think people need to take a step back and put this issue into perspective. ~MDD4696 01:11, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. First, you have invoked Lowtax's law. Bad form. Second, I don't believe for a picosecond that (most) people will leave this conversation and go edit articles. Rather, they'll twiddle their thumbs and play with their bots, fighting vandalism. It's oh-so-much-easier than doing research, 'editing articles, and learning. Instead, can't we all agree to go play Cowboys and Indians? Avriette 03:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
• comment Well... I'm not sure I agree this was stupid. I'd like some kind of policy or guide to come out of this.... but I have been off doing other things, not just fighting vandals. I find that sort of not that exciting compared to writing articles. Glad others like it though. ++Lar: t/c 04:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
• Whatever... Speaking as the bloke who formulated Lowtax's Law, I must say that I use Wikipedia primarily in the capacity of an encyclopedia reader -- and as a member and a reader, I see Wikipedia as a source of factual information, not as a place to be exposed to people's "individualistic" points of view. Therefore, the best way for Wikipedia to "serve their members" (as Avriette himself puts it (!)) is to work towards this end. Sorry, but when the public donates money to Wikipedia, you don't use it to host your own little private political campaign portal. Get your own Internet domain with your own moolah and do it there. Remember, I am a member as well, and my interests and rights are just as important as yours. Make what of that you will. Bi 07:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose Moving on is not going to change anything, just ignore the situation. (Also why are people voting on this?) --T-rex 06:59, 27 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 :) ~MDD4696 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.

           JDoorjam     Talk 04:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Decategorapocalyps Now!

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)

The real problem is POV editing, and the presence or absence of categories as part of userbox templates has nothing to do with it. Removing the categories makes using the userboxes for good faith collaboration more difficult, and substing templates simply defeats the purpose of having a template. The only thing inherently uncivil here is the mass deletion of userboxes and associated categories. --Dschor 12:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I object. I can't see how tis came about from the current discussion... Ian¹³_ID:540053 18:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... I thought what's really uncivil is when someone uses a server meant to host an encyclopedia and paid from other peoples' pockets as his personal soapbox, and then claims it as a human right. On the other hand, I'm not sure if any of the proposed measures will effectively reduce loyalty mobilization. After all, if some crank writes a shill article on Wackopharmaceuticals and there's a motion to delete (or unbias) it, the original author can always mobilize for support via his wacko message board outside of Wikipedia. So I guess cleaning up stuff may be an idea to consider if Wikipedia's short of disk space, though I don't think disk space is the issue here. Bi 08:19, 27 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)

If this is done, then we're in effect simply left with the question, "what is it appropriate for people to have on their user pages?" On the downside, that's a much bigger and more complex question. On the upside, it seems to be attracting far less heat at present. (I'm assuming that's "systematically subst'd and then deleted", as opposed to "left around for the convenience of future substing", which would have its own residual issues.) Alai 20:22, 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)

Let's reiterate: there has never been consensus to categorize the userboxes — just because the language one are categorized by default, does not make such a tehcnical leap/loophole sufficient. There is a qualitative difference, which many are far too quick to totally ignore. El_C 00:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Assume good faith. Don't take away useful categories or "what links here" capabilities because you assume they will be used in bad faith. So it's happened once. So what? Vandalism has happened more than once, but we still let unregistered users edit. --James S. 07:08, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

You ask me to assume good faith, which you also (distractingly, I find) bold for emphasis, yet you conflate unrelated issues whilst neglecting to touch on useful what, to whom, how? I'm against needless openess to bad faith and abuse. What's to gain? El_C 08:44, 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:

Neutral Vice President: Your Neutralness, it's a beige alert.

Neutral President: If I don't survive, tell my wife "Hello."

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)

Explanation of Tony Sidaway's revert of edits by Jdforrester and Angr

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)

Call to take the next step

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)

PROPOSAL

This discussion should now be split into three separate discussions:

1. What types of Wikipedian categories shall be allowed / proscribed? (e.g., no religions, etc.)
2. Shall userboxes be de-templatized (not permitted to be in linkable format, code must be subst'd or copied in, mainly to avoid "what links here" phenomena), or not?
3. What Wikipedia userboxes shall be allowed. (Possible answers could be just those corresponding to allowed categories, or a superset of that, or any, or none.)

SHORT COMMENTS

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"

• Yes move on to address these three questions seperately. Herostratus 04:27, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
• Yes, those are exactly the right questions, whether it needs to be put in terms of a formal policy or not is another matter. Alai 08:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

LONGER COMMENTS

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)

Proposed Policy on Speedy Deletions

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)

I object to the inherent preassumptions in such a policy proposal; it sounds like endless war (no pun intended). But I have yet to see clear consensus that userboxes aside from project-related ones, should be non-susbst. This happened fluidly, through the backdoor via the language boxes, and I'd like to see it spelled out why people demand on not susbsting (which in no way alters the appearence of a page). El_C 07:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• Believe me - speedy deletions in no way end the war more quickly. There have been countless Deletion Reviews as a result of the Speedy Deletions, each as heated as the next. I don't think that I even need to remind you of the whole Kelly Martin affair.--God of War 07:26, 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)

• Yes that is what speedy deletion is for - However, this has been much abused as some admins delete templates they don't like and then list them on DRV where they are later overturned. This is not the way to go about things. Some kind of control needs to be set in place to stop this kind of nonsense.--God of War 07:36, 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)

Incidentally, do you think you could use "bold" a little less? It makes you appear to be in a bad temper all the time and tends to detract from whatever it is you are saying. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:54, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I think personally the current speedy rules are adequate, process isn't changed because of abuse in this sense. Otherwise every page ever vandalised would be protected. Ian13|talk 09:31, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• Re: "policy that nobody is going to follow anyway"

As a relatively new editor here, I found the out-of-process speedy deletion of the template referenced above disturbing. It was yet one more example, and perhaps the most egregious in my short experience, of the arbitrary application of WP policy by admins. This is causing me to reevaluate whether the level of anarchy at WP makes it worth investing my time to contribute. The fact that in this case the speedy deletion was overturned restored some hope in the process. However, a review of the discussion surrounding the undeletion reveals not a level-headed discussion on the application of policy and process, but largely a barely civilized shouting match on points that belonged on the TfD. Perhaps some admins that have been here for a while have lost touch with how their actions are perceived by those of us new to this project. If the goal is to encourage wider participation, I think admins need to be held to a higher standard regarding process rather than the current drift towards anarchy. – Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 22:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think a couple of problems are that (1) admins are basically vandal-fighters. They're policemen. You want good policemen but when they start to think Hey I've got this gun, why don't I go over and whip that school committee into shape, you've got a problem. But there's no mechanism to prevent that. (2) The admins are, almost by definition, long-timers who have put some serious time into the project. In a time of organizational stress, it only natural for them to internalize an "old guard" mentality where the newcomers are the problem. After all, admins tend to be techie-types; many of them wouldn't know Peter Drucker from Screaming Lord Sutch. (3) Most real organizations sweep out the bottom 5% periodically; it so improves the concentration of the others, don't you know. Here, I think you could get de-adminned if you broke into WikiWorld HQ and attacked the servers with a bazooka... but I'm not sure. Herostratus 06:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Man, you like to swing the tar-brush around. You are really free with the generalizations, and none of it is helpful to this discussion. (BTW, I'm not an admin, I am a newcomer, I have been a policeman, and I am a techie who does know who Peter Drucker is.) -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:26, 31 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)

Why not remove user pages entirely?

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)

In fact, how about eliminating user accounts entirely? Kim Bruning 09:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I expect your comment was intended to be sarcastic, but I'll answer it straightforwardly in the spirit of debate. I can say, sure, that would be fine, but creating user accounts allows vandalism patrollers (amongst others) with limited time and resources to quickly distinguish between people who may be using a shared terminal versus people who create an account simply to be disruptive. User accounts also allow multiple users using shared terminals to have their say in RfC, RfA, RfD, etc. There is the issue of allowing editors to communicate via talk pages as well. It still doesn't change the fact that user pages are mostly WP-sanctioned vanity pages which are hogging a lot of bandwith, creating a lot of debate and detracting from improving the information available to people doing a Google search. Having a user account doesn't need to include having an essentially editor-proof vanity page. - dharmabum (talk) 12:00, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Sarcasm doesn't carry online, so/and in fact I was quite serious. (see also: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Regarding_anonymous_editing). Removing user accounts might also entail restructuring or removal of RfC, RfA, RfD, ... to accomodate. It's certainly an interesting thought-experiment. What would the consequences be? Kim Bruning 19:15, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

My apologies for assuming sarcasm. Thanks for the link - I hadn't really thought before about the benefits of anonymous editing. It's funny, I'm now trying to remember why I created a user account around 2 months ago, as I've been editing since 2004 anonymously, and I can't remember why I did now. I've been racking my brain, but I'm still not sure how the needs filled by RfC or RfD could be done anonymously, but sometimes I'm not very imaginative. :) - dharmabum (talk) 22:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Interesting, yes; but probably not practical encyclopedia-wise. Some major (negative) consequences:

• Legal: since removing user accounts would effectively make all contributions pseudonymous, they would no longer be protected by copyright until the death of the author.
• Technical: no user accounts = no effective control over user rights (in the software, rather than the legal, sense). While the replacement of the Main Page with goatse would be merely an annoyance, deletion of high-profile pages has very real processing costs that would slag the servers in short order.
• Social: removing the possibility of recognition for one's contributions—even if that recognition is fairly insignificant in the grand scheme—removes one of the incentives for people to make said contributions. It is debatable to what extent contributions would decrease in practice, but there will certainly be some impact.

Full, enforced anonymity might work for the average bulletin board. Getting it to work for a top-20 site—and, in theory, a serious encyclopedia project—is somewhat more complicated ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 23:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't have a username give one more anonymity (assumeing that one's username is a pseudoname)? If I'm anon, my IP address is public; with that info, a person would only have to convince my ISP to give them my personal info. But with a username, the person would first have to convince an admin to give them the IP address that goes with the username before going to my ISP. Right? Or am I missing something? Herostratus 07:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Using an account means that others can be assured that all edits and comments tagged with that account name came from the same user (assuming he or she has not shared the account name and password). IP addresses are often volatile and/or shared, so an anonymous user may be contributing from many IP address, and many anonymous users may be contributing from the same IP address. Having an account and using it allows others to see and judge a users' contributions as a whole. The main point is that users with account can be held accountable for their actions. Users on volatile/shared IP addresses cannot. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:47, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I see your point, and realize that many user pages are not particularly contributive to Wikipedia. On the other hand, I use my user page to keep track of what I've done, what I'm working on and what I want to work on, to keep handy shortcuts to things I consult regularly and to work on new articles before they're ready for public display. I do have a little personal information there, as I think it allows others to get a better sense of who I am and what I'm trying to do in Wikipedia. I think a good measure of what should be on a user page is my favorite version of Occam's razor. To do with more what may be done with less is vanity. (Yeah, I know, my page still has a lot of vanity in it, but I do try.) -- Dalbury^(Talk) 13:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe that's all a user page should be, is basically a sandbox for the user's convenience (like the one I use here for working on a big change to an article), and for keeping track of projects and so on, so the intent behind the page isn't for other people to come and read it, but rather as the start page for an editor when working. Funny, all the debate on userboxes never made me change my page, other than subst'ing and de-categorizing my userboxes, but some of the thoughts I've read here are going to have a major impact on my user page. - dharmabum (talk) 22:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I do list what areas I'm working on (or interested in) at the top of my user page, but I moved other personal information to a sub-page a while back. My user page is primarily a menu taking me to links I like to keep handy. I do have five userboxes; three are project membership boxes, and I use them as shotcuts to the project pages. I tried subst-ing them, but went back to using the templates. The other two show my edit count and user page vandalized count. Those are a bit of vanity, but they are subst-ed, and I think quite harmless. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 23:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

You may feel that I only use my user page as a soapbox or a biography. However, I also use it to store a task list of things that I need to be working on, as a scratch pad of articles I am working on. Take for example, my talk page, and User:Fluzwup's talk page. We have been working on coming up with templates (along with several other users) to add substantial content to an entire category of articles. Additionally, I feel that having a biography or statement about myself allows other editors to contact me. In fact, I have had at least a couple people come to me for proofreading or expansion of firearms related articles. These users might never have come to me if I didn't have some way of communicating to them that I had the ability to do so. For a recent example, scot recently added a Copper units of pressure article at the request of User:Wwoods (who was at the same time reviewing some of our content prior to its being "released" to the encyclopedia). It is very easy to take the vast "wars" that have been happening in userspace out of context and exagerate that notion to say that they should be removed entirely. This is not the case. Many users (and I will be the first to step forward for scrutiny in this case) are using their user pages to much good. Let me also say that "my user page" is something of a misnomer. There is no logical separation of encyclopedia pages and user pages. While they can moved or removed or categorized by their names, there is little separation of said pages to the software. "My" user page is no different than yours or anyone elses. As such, if these pages are moved or changed, you will find that the function they serve for users such as myself will rapidly become fitted into something else. Talk pages, for example. And I like the way things presently are compared to that. Lastly, I do not believe that "user pages" belong in the encyclopedia. However, I think that Jimbo has been very clear in his vision for the project. That this encyclopedia is a work in progress, and we are to be working towards a publishable, extractable encyclopedia that can be printed, say, for "the little girl in africa." In that case, Wikipedia 1.0 will simply not include those pages. But as we are here working on a work in progress, user pages are essential for getting work done. My last comment on this issue is that I personally feel it is fascist to suggest removing them. But that's just me. Avriette 14:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Um, no Avriette, its not just you, it would be fascist... wow, the turn this discussion has taken... its like people are ashamed to have userpages, that it shows weakness to have personal info on your userpage... sheesh. I assume that y'alls cube or office at work is devoid of decoration...? In a virtual organization its important, necessary and vital that users be permitted to have a "public face". Just trust me on that one. I list my articles and other stuff on my userpage because I'm proud of them (OK, not that that there's much). Man, that's just human. That helps me be motivated to finish the article, to get to list it... Not taking pride in your work is not admirable at all... people who don't take pride in their work are easily manipulated, in my opinion. Other stuff on my page is just "this is me". Unbelievable... a few humorless techies and their robotic parroting of mindless slogans have got people thinking Hey yeah I should be a faceless drone... and in a volunteer organization! If we were getting paid it might be different... um, yeah, I'm here to help you put together a product that would take tens of millions of dollars for you to do normally... may I please have a little picture on my userpage? Herostratus 07:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that the point was missed. I was not making a "facist" suggestion to remove user pages, or really any suggestion of policy change at all; certainly not one intented to start folks throwing around aggressive political catchphrases. I was simply trying to draw attention to the idea that a "user page" is not necessarily an important feature of an encyclopedia. In this fight about what is appropriate for a user page on Wikipedia, I think that the fact that a user page on Wikipedia is an invention of the way Wikipedia was implemented to include them has been lost. Encyclopedias don't include pages devoted to their editors interests, novels (at least usually) don't include pictures of the author's cat, and there is no reason to assume that user pages and their content are immutable facts of online life on the Wikipedia.

In short, this site was created for a purpose. It was to provide a freely-edited encyclopedia. One of the features of that encyclopedia was a page essentially owned by a registered editor, with any content they wanted on it. How would it alter the community if those user pages had never been included in the first place? That's the question I was trying to pose here, the change in perspective I was offering, and the political ideals of Mussolini and friends had squat to do with it. - dharmabum (talk) 08:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Encyclopedias don't include pages devoted to their editors interests, novels (at least usually) don't include pictures of the author's cat, and there is no reason to assume that user pages and their content are immutable facts of online life on the Wikipedia.

So, tell me where somebody has said "my user page" (and again, I think the term is disingenuous) will be included in Wikipedia 1.0. Again, people seem to have forgotten that, while we aim to make an encyclopedia, we do it in a fashion that has never been attempted before. As such, and by definition, our attempt will produce media the likes of which have never been seen. We are producing an encyclopedia. We are not producing Encyclopedia Brittanica. This is a collaborative environment, and thus requires, as Herostratus put it, a face to the persona. Without it, things will collapse. I don't know how much time you've spent in collaborative online environments outside of wikipedia. However, in BBS's, decades ago, on IRC, on perlmonks, everything2, and every single online collaborative community down the line, things get very rapidly out of hand if people don't associate a person with the text they're reading. People will act unilaterally in the image of the project that they have constructed, and rampantly delete things. Horrible insults and personal attacks will be hurled at people. Mobs will form. The community falls to pieces.

I think some people have forgotten that this is much more than just an encyclopedia. This is a community. A community producing an encyclopedia. But a community. Don't forget that. People need faces to work together. Avriette 01:12, 1 February 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)

Since when are userboxes "damaging features"? Certainly there are harmless examples of political userboxes. How does it harm wikipedia for partisans to identify their biases on their user page? It seems to me all the talk of damage is overblown rhetoric that only serves to obfuscate. My take on things is that any expression allowed on User space should be permitted in a Userbox - surely we'd be better off just using common sense and allowing users to modify their user pages as they see fit, including templates? --Dschor 18:21, 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)

I think the response has been far out of proportion to any potential danger. How many campaigns organized via userboxes have actually damaged wikipedia? As far as I can tell, the answer is... none. There is no reason to assume that political and religious userboxes attract the "wrong kind of person". --Dschor 20:30, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Tony, the problem with that logic (I would nominally agree with it otherwise) is the admins have shown no ability whatsoever to exercise "common sense", nor any ability to determine objectively what what is "damaging to wikipedia." The classical example of this is the log of what was deleted by Kelly (crap, I can't seem to find it on her RFC or on the proposed userbox policy). Some userboxes were deleted when they crossed her opinions, and others were not. While I don't think it's being debated that she acted out of process and contrary to the spirit of the project, I doubt very much that this is the only such occurrance. She may have just pissed off the most people this time around. There are plenty of situations wherein "the little guy" gets shafted because not enough people have noticed that the shaft is being issued. This is one of the reasons I've been so opposed to people bitching about vote stacking. If administrators can't tolerate people watching their actions, they shouldn't be administrators. Admins aren't accountable for what they do, and they're also not capable of objective, clearheaded thought. Most of the time. There are admins out there who are definitely the exception. Unfortunately we have over a thousand admins, and the good ones are the exception. Not the rule. Avriette 01:23, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

That is simply incorrect. A campaign using userboxes to save the Christian Alliance campaigning page obtained half a dozen votes by talk page spamming, Such actions damage the consenus-based decision-making process that is at the heart of Wikipedia's daily operations. --Tony Sidaway 22:03, 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)

Some of these things are not like the others...

• {{User GWB}} - personal attack
• {{user disBush}} - personal attack
• {{User against Saud}} - personal attack
• {{User does not trust Jimbo}} - personal attack
• {{User Antiracist hitler}} - personal attack
• {{User against scientology}} - impersonal attack
• {{user against fox hunting}} - impersonal attack
• {{User homosexual-no}} - impersonal attack
• {{User pacifist3}} - impersonal attack
• {{User ku klux}} - not attacking anything.

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)

But what is somebody dosn't trust Jimbo? Why is it ok for user boxes to say that people trust Jimbo, but not ok for people to disagree? You can't allow one but not the other. Also dispite being a supporter of George Bush, I have no problem If people want to say that they don't like them. It is perfetlly ok for somebody to be against something. and I know this is about the user pages so it dosn't really apply, but wikipedia is NPOV, wikipedia is not politically correct. --T-rex 15:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

If you support keeping all of these, that is absolutely fine by me. What I am concerned by is that some of these are getting deleted and other ones are getting kept, at the discretion of a bunch of people who consider the stated POV "unacceptable", voting on Templates for Deletion. Do we not accept people with all points of view? Why do some of them deserve userboxes and others don't? Ashibaka tock 18:45, 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)

• Of course none of them can be legitimately speedied as attacks, because the speedy for attacks only applies to articles. and many things which are being described as attacks are IMO nothign of the sort. a userbox that expresses a POV -- even a hostile and bigoted POV -- or that indicates membership in a group that has such a PoV, is not an attack o any individual or group of indivuals. a user box that siad "This user is a member of Hamas" is not an attack. Now that said, we may well widh to create a policy prohibiting such userboxes on wikipedia. Indeed we might wish to prohibit user boxes that identicy ppolitical or activist group membership such as "This user is a member of the X political party". But that is not an attack and should not be so characterized. DES ^(talk) 19:04, 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)

There's a reason the personal attack qualification was restricted to articles rather than being a general speedy rule. Speedying something out of process will create chaos if another admin disagrees. Ashibaka tock 19:48, 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)

• My view is that 1)Hamas is an organization that has sponsered and endorsed violence (including killing) in the name of a PoV, and directed agaisnt people because of their etthinc and/or religious background. 2) The Klu-Klux-Klan is an organization that has sponsered and endorsed violence (including killing) in the name of a PoV, and directed agaisnt people because of their etthinc and/or religious background. 3) {{User ku klux}} says that the user who employes it is a member of the Klu-Klux-Klan. It is therfore neither more nor less legitimate than a hypothetical {{User Hamas}}. Since you said (or so it seemed to me) that all the above templates are "extreme personal attacks" I was using a hypothetical Hamas template to point out that {{User ku klux}} is n ot an attack by any standard I can see. The only reason that its deletion is being suppoorted while other user boxes that express a PoV are not as far as I can tell is that {{User ku klux}} expresses a PoV highly distateful to many here (including myself -- speaking as a person who has actully beeen invlved in confrointations with a small organized KKK group). DES ^(talk) 19:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

• All of the templates above should be kept. None are speedies, and I doubt that there is any reasonable rationale for deleting them at TfD. Voting is Evil, particularly when it turns TfD into a forum of censors. Claiming that any of these are attack templates is a radical stretch of the imagination. Those that have been deleted should be restored, and those that are under discussion should be kept. Wikipedia is not censored, and user opinions should not be censored either. I may or may not trust Jimbo, but I should be able to use a box to tell you so either way. All that I see here is a bunch of deletion in violation of WP:POINT and WP:AGF. --Dschor 20:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Hamas and the KKK are evil, but they do exsist, and some deranged people may be proud members of one of these groups, and they should be allowed to do so on their user page. The use of templetes just makes the code easier to put up and also saves space on wikipedia's servers. Tony has it all wrong the templates are usefull (in that they make the code easy to implement) and need to be kept not en mass deleted, regardless of what they say(with an exception for copyright things). Go back to what Jimbo actually did say, he said that if you want the boxes to be removed to get rid of them on your own page and hope that others will follow suit, not for the admins to go crazy deleting everything. --T-rex 21:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

This is so blatantly false it's unbelievable. Templates do not reduce server load. They increase it, if only fractionally. The space for storing information is only a tiny consideration, and storage space really, really isn't a problem at the moment. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 21:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

No, by using templates code is not repeted and server space is saved. You are correct when you say that Templates do not reduce server load, however, as that has to do with bandwith, as Templates are only usefull in saving server space(which are the GB on the hard drives). Sorry if I confused anyone --T-rex 01:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Still not true. The majority of requests are served through the Squid caches. Squids cache HTML, or at least the HTML of the content part of the page. No space is saved on these by templates. That isn't an argument against templates, but yours most certainly isn't an argument for them. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 17:40, 1 February 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)

Okay, so you would support deleting {{User GWB}}, {{user against fox hunting}}, and so forth. Then you, too, have no problem with the statement I made at the top, that all of these need to either stay or go. I am looking for that rare breed who is picking and choosing from among the political userboxes to decide which ones aren't good enough. Ashibaka tock 22:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

They all go, ultimately. Really, that will happen. But preferably voluntarily. --Tony Sidaway 05:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

No, they won't. The templates might go, but the code will simply migrate to individual user pages. If you want to eliminate them entirely, you'll have to permaban a very large chunk of the user base. Rogue 9 14:33, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't take that to the bank, Tony Sidaway. WP will have to ban me when they ban userboxes. It's not that userboxes are that important. It's authoritarianism that is antithetical to wikis. --Fang Aili 16:59, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Please read before making comments such as this. Tony did not suggest deleting all userboxes (at least, I really don't think he did, and from what he's said before I doubt he did), rather just the opinion-broadcasting ones. And, FWIW, Wikipedia does lots of things that are antithetical to wikis. That in itself is not an argument. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 18:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I interpreted "all" to mean "all userboxes", though maybe Tony only meant the ones listed above. From my reading of Tony's previous comments and actions, it appears that he would in fact like all userboxes eliminated from Wikipedia. I could be wrong, though. And even if he did mean that only so-called polemical or opinion-broadcasting userboxes will "go", then my opinion stands: that I'll either be banned or quit when that happens. --Fang Aili 19:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Tony has said elsewhere that he has userboxes on his user page. And I'm sorry to hear that the issue of banning polemical userboxes would drive you out of Wikipedia. I learned long ago not to make those kind of statements. I worked far too long for a boss who would greet any threats about quitting with wishes for good luck in whatever that person choose to do in the future. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 19:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Fortunately WP is not my boss, and I edit by my own volition. --Fang Aili 20:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

A reasonable solution

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)

Voluntary removal

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)

OK, I've removed the one userbox on my page that fell into this categery. What we need now is a userbox to identify and promote the removal of religious, political and polemical userboxes (probably one exists already...) I think the voluntary approach is far preferrable to a mandatory policy. – Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 22:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

It's {{User Wikipedian}} and {{User Wikipedian2}}. Ashibaka tock 22:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

No one is above the law

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)

... Huh? ~MDD4696 23:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

ummm...if u don't have anything to say, don't say it at all--God of War 00:30, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo, la politesse, etc etc

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)

Response to KeithTyler

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)

Re your post above: But I must assume that the long-standing established and consented guidelines on userspace had the mission in mind but also recognized that the mission cannot succeed without comraderie, or more importantly, having some way of knowing whose on your team.

We can't all agree and we aren't structured in a military hierarchy, so dispute and dispute resolution exist.

Userboxes are an extension of the sorts of things that are seen as potentially beneficial to the interpersonal or even inter-functional interactions of building a dictionary.

The thing is, a lot of the problems hefted at userboxen are not with userboxes themselves but with their content. And most of the content of most userboxes are within the userspace bounds. In other words, you could abolish userboxes but still have these potential problems of factionalism and PA. Eliminating or regulating userboxes won't make these things go away. The channels for dealing with those problems already exist.

Some off-the-top-of-my-head potential benefits of userboxes to the WP mission:

• Admitting personal bias in either WP content or mechanism
• Showing areas of expertise
• Finding common ground -- this might even alleviate some PAs and disputes!

- Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Userspace is special

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)

While I agree with your sentiments, I think you're treading in very murky water. Observe the following statements:

• I do not like Kelly Martin.
• I do not like autocrats.
• I do not like Kelly Martin because she is an autocrat.
• Kelly Martin is an autocrat; I do not like her.

Where does the "statement of dislike" end and "personal attack" begin? I think this is very much a binary decision. Either we allow "stuff" on user pages, or we do not. There are many drawbacks to both. I think more harm would be done by the former. I suppose in this case WP:IAR could save us from things getting too out of hand, but that's what got us to this place to begin with. I think it's been demonstrated that those who have the ability to delete and to block do not have the judgement necessary to exercise those powers in a common-sense, good faith, for-the-community fashion. Avriette 00:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Somebody (Keith D. Tyler) has finally caught on to the truth in this whole thing. People don't except user spaces to be NPOV or politically correct

The difference between a personal attack and a POV is pretty easy to distinguish. It certainly doesn't include all religious affiliations. Do we need to eliminate all userboxes because of grey area cases? -- Jbamb 01:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The fracas surrounding the GWB and "house of saud" templates are good indicators of this. If we want to make it more personal and relevant, I could make a userbox that said "Jimbo is a flagrant wikipedia policy violator" (with respect to his editing the article about himself, that of bomis, etc). Which would be true, but could be easily considered a personal attack. It's also my personal point of view, and not exactly neutral. These lines are not easy to draw. Which is what I was getting at. In the case where one cannot make an easy distinction here, it is much safer to rule on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion. I cna't imagine how many people would get fed up (I may well be among them) if some policy comes down from the mountain telling users that they Are Not Allowed to have personal, negative, opinionated content on their user pages. Far more good comes from freedom on user pages than bad. Unless you're talking about rogue admins destroying them. Avriette 05:01, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I think those edits would make JW an "arguable guideline grey area occupant", rather than a "flagrant policy violator". Unless he'd set Godking mode at the time, in which it wouldn't really be either. Alai 08:23, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh gah. In the words of a famous Zen koan that never was: "In my opinion, it's an objective fact." Bi 10:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Picky, but WP:AUTO is a guidline, not policy. There is a difference. A lot of people for some reason misrepresnt WP:AUTO as a hard policy, but it is not. But I agree with your comment.

Interestingly, WP:USER says just as much about what can go on the userpage rather than what shouldn't. It is because userspace is recognized as a useful place to share yourself with the community. After all, there is some sort of community here, and it isn't all just rigid shop-talk. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed guideline

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?

• Anything that helps you get work done -- lists tacked to the wall, that sort of thing? Of course.
• Anything silly, absurd, funny, pop-culturish, or pointless? Of course.
• Personal stuff -- pictures of your kids, pictures relating to interests (your horse, your sports hero, etc), pennant from alma mater, etc.? Of course.
• Professional degrees, awards,and certificates? Of course.
• Anything that mocks the suits (bosses)? Up to a point, Posters from Despair.com are practically de rigeur. Humorless or insufficiently-disguised attacks are out. The borderline is hard to define. (Here, I think Wikipedia might allow a bit more leeway than usual.)
• Anything that deprecates a colleauge? Absolutely not.
• Anything that deprecates a group (cabal, in-crowd, etc) of colleagues? Absolutly not. Leave that for the water cooler.
• Proclamation of religous faith? Not recommended, and certainly only in a very inconspicuous way, if a all. Presentation matters here. A cutesy inspirational message will pass muster, but little else. Comedy or satirical religious material (Cthulu, Church of Bob) are of course OK. (In meatspacd, exotic religions might be OK -- you might get some slack if you're the only Hindu in 200 miles, but that doesn't apply on the net. Weird or bizarre religions are out -- sorry, it's not fair, but there it is.)
• Items which proclaim political views? No,even if humorous. Material supporting very non-controversial points (democracy, patriotism) might be OK. Females are permitted a small poster of "fish without a bicycle" saying.
• Items which proclaim sexual identity? Not recommended, but realistically a "gay pride" button is going to pass muster, but nothing else. "Gay pride" gets a pass for various complex reasons. Any more detail -- that one is a "bottom" or whatever -- is definitely TMI. Anti-gay or pro-hetero material is out.
• What else?

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)

If we are going to have a policy, we need to have a clear, objective policy, not a reference to a particular segment of popular culture. What kinds of things are seen on cube walls varies widely. This is also a rather U.S.-centric approach, it seems to me. I would almost rather have the current anarchy than this proposal. I Strongly oppsoe this suggestion. DES ^(talk) 16:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, it is perfectly alright to express political views in an office-like environment (although not all of your colleagues may like hearing them). And the idea of only allowing democratic, 'pattriotic' or pro-gay statements is in my view unacceptable - if you allow them, you have to allow them all. Larix 16:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• Not everyone here is editing from a cube farm. WP:NOT censored to be politically correct which is the essence of your guidelines.--God of War 16:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Arbitrary, vague, and subjective. Especially the notion of "relatively liberal, knowledge-industry business". What the blazes exactly does that mean? Such a policy would throw open a rush of variable definitions being applied to userboxes. And that's assuming most people have any idea what a "typical knowledge industry business" is like. Actually I realize I'm not even sure what "knowledge industry" would be. FWIW I once had the picture of Bush and Cheney as Beavis and Butthead on my cube wall, at one job, and no one cared.

Furthermore... this would be a userspace policy, not a userbox policy, so it's out of scope here. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the motivation behind the proposal, but think it would be unworkable and inequitable in practice, for reasons mentioned.--Chris 20:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The proposed guideline has nothing to do with userboxes (it pertains to userpage content, not use of template space) and in any case it is far too prescriptive. We have a pretty good guideline at Wikipedia:User page for the purpose. --Tony Sidaway 15:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

But the problem with userboxes as stated by Jimbo does not have to do with templatespace, but with a boogeyman of divisiveness and the bad sorts of people (like me, I guess) that such boxes supposedly attract. Misuse of templatespace is a fairly weak side argument -- templatespace is specifically there to store reuseable content designated for use in other spaces. Arguing that userspace templates don't belong in templatespace is inconsistent. Where else then do templates go? Templatespace is a functional space, not a content space. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:31, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

FYI

Wikipedia:Divisiveness WAS 4.250 18:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

How many new policies are we going to propose? this dosn't help anything, and dosn't mention that is not already being discussed here. --T-rex 18:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

There is a lot of talk about user boxes. What they are good for. What they are bad for. "Divisiveness" seems to be the key complaint. We have no guideline on "divisiveness" concerning user boxes or anything else (well, a little on how polls are evil when they are divisive). This guideline aims to clarify the concern about "divisiveness". A key missing element in the user box issue is what is and what is not an acceptable "userbox". How about if it is not userbox, but looks like one and is still divisive? What about any kind of us versus them bumpersticker label? The issue is divisiveness, not the form it takes. Here is a place to work out what qualifies as "divisive" and/or what to do about it. I suggest here that the key is not to say "I am a jew" is divisive or not divisive; but to say if people are claiming it is then the proper response is to ADD to it and say for example "My mother was a jew, so I consider myself a jew even though I am also an atheist" or any other elaboration so we are not dividing into factions, but instead are celebrating our individualities and uniqueness. WAS 4.250 16:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm of two minds about the value of this proposed policy, but one advantage that I do see is that it fleshes out one of the values behind Jimbo's request. If someone asks, "What's wrong with a userbox saying I'm a liberal, or a Christian?", it might be good to have a reasoned policy to point to instead of "Jimbo says so" — although "Jimbo says so" is good enough for me personally, somebody else might bristle at it and misinterpret the suggestion as a censorious diktat. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

You can not "celebrate our individualitites and uniqueness" without saying what you believe in and the causes you support. Sure some people may say some bad things about others, but that happens. "Divisiveness" is not a bad thing. All we really need is to remain civil, and to be nice to each other. We do not need to agree, and we do not need to go out of our way to avoid offending people --T-rex 17:04, 2 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.

Brian: You are all individuals!

Crowd: YES, YES, WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!

Brian: You are all different!

Crowd: YES, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT!

Lone Voice: I'm not.

Person next to him: SHH!

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)

You could just as easily argue that we do not really need templates at all. You could just enter such information by hand. It's completely arbitrary. And for some reason, targeted at userspace. If anyone has problems with people using Userspace to showcase themselves, or *how* they showcase themselves, then they need to crank through a more restrictive userspace policy. I'm appalled that anyone would try to regulate userspace by the side-door of regulating userboxes. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 20:32, 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)

The reason that I choose to use userboxes to who I am is that they are bright colourful and pretty, that is the only reason. In fact I only have five or so user boxes on my page, the only reason this issue bugs me is that I think you should be able to put anything on your user page. No body is making you use userboxes, but that dosn't mean that you should stop those that do want to use them, regardless of what they say --T-rex 18:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

That's the advantage of the generic userbox template, e.g.:

naziSpringtime for Hitler, and Germany! Winter for Poland and France!

...which is coded as: {{userbox|red|lightgray|nazi|Springtime for Hitler, and Germany! Winter for Poland and France!}}

No-one can squash your freedom of speech; on the other hand, you can't use the "What links here" function to rally your fellow nazis.--Chris 18:39, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Then have a policy along the lines of "You are not allowed to rally your fellow nazis to massivlly edit an artical" Although even here, as long as NPOV is enforced on the artical pages this still does not create a problem. I could care less if the templates are liked or not, but some people want to ban them regardless --T-rex 18:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

With reference to the above, I think it's high time someone made a "This user thinks that making lots of spelling errors is cool and open-minded and individualist" userbox. Or a "This user thinks that people who try to spell correctly are closed-minded mindless memesheep" userbox. Sorry, couldn't resist. :) Bi 20:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

My opinion

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)

So much for my "This user hates cauliflower" template. I think you are entitled to your opinion, and that others are entitled to theirs, even if that means the want to tell the world that "This user hates PCs". No harm done by a userbox, IMHO. --Dschor 12:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

All of what you say is already covered by existing WP policy and guidelines. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

That's not going to help... we already had "this user likes the ku klux klan" and that's hardly a positive POV. >Radiant< 12:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

It is not up to Wikipedia to decide between positive POV and negative POV. To do so would, of course, be POV. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 21:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

All Wikipedia policies are inherently POV. WP:V expresses the POV that verifiability is important. WP:NPOV expresses the POV that point-of-view in articles is not a good thing. Policies are not articles, and cannot be treated as such. Lord Bob 21:18, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

You'd probably get a consensus on deleting "this user likes the ku klux klan", but what about "this user accepts Roman Catholic doctrine on homosexuality"? This approach leads to endless wrangling. I don't really care what people say on their user pages in the hand-rolled user boxes ({{userbox}} or direct coding), but I don't want to see any more debates about deleting templates. That means we either permit virtually any userbox template or we get rid of all POV and identity-group userbox templates and suggest people code their own. No templates, no arguments about deleting them.

I would permit or encourage userbox templates around interest groups ("this user is interested in Scythian issues" but not "This user is a Scythian"), provided they are in good faith and not veiled attempts at a creating POV or identity boxes. Again I have no problem with non-template POV and identity boxes on user pages - or, at least, if there are any problems, they fall under general policies about what you can have on your user page. They aren't userbox issues per se.--Chris 00:18, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I want to comment on several points. First, the issue is not the userbox itself. The issue is " Should users be allowed to express political or religious opinions on their userpages?" You may remove all userboxes but users can still express their political or religious attitudes through images or merely by writing them. Then what? shall we remove user pages entirely? I think users are entitled to express their views in user pages. It is part of identifying the user. If not, user pages are useless. Second, i don't think the info in a userpage may reflect a bad image of wikipedia. It is a userpage not a wikipedia article. A userpage should not be neutral. We humans are not neutral. I suggest adding a note in user pages " This is a userpage.The information or views in this page represent only this user and not wikipedia. If you want detailed unbiased information about a subject, please refer to a wikipedia article" or something of that kind. Third, Deciding what is inflammatory and what is not is almost impossible. Everything can be regarded as inflammatory from one point of view . For example, the userbox user against iraq war was considered inflammatory by some admins. However, i can only think of it as a call for peace. Forth, i noticed that deleting a userbox can be more divisive than the userbox itself especially those speedy deletes by some admins without considering the votes. It is thought of as administrative abuse whatever the userbox was. Finally, I myself -and i think most wikipedia users- will accept any userbox expressing an opinion of the user e.g. This user supports xxx or this user hates xxx or even this user thinks xxx is a bullshit. I can't find any of this inflammatory. it is simply an opinion. However, i wont accept a userbox saying xxx is bullshit. This is the kind of userboxes that should be deleted. Therefore, my opinion is not to delete any userbox expressing an opinion. Keeping all opinions can be also regarded as neutrality.--Wedian 08:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

As I've said elsewhere on this page, I see 4 problems with userboxes:

1. Userboxes (and categories) being used to recruit for POV-pushing campaigns.
2. The display of political, religious and other polemical userboxes promoting a feeling of belonging to a specific group rather than to Wikipedia.
3. The increase in trolling with userboxes, by deliberately creating confrontational and disruptive userboxes.
4. The colossal waste of time, effort and talent being spent on the proliferation of unwanted and useless userboxes.

The first three problems directly threaten the heart of Wikipedia. The fourth problem probably would cause some had-wringing, but not be resticted, if it were notfor the first three problems. Yes, NPOV doesn't apply to user pages, but I do not see that as a license to promote adherence to POV-pushing groups to the detriment of NPOV in articles, and to campaign to turn Wikipedia into a them against us free-for-all. User pages are a privilege extended to registered editors to help them contribute to Wikipedia. When the abuse of user pages threatens to harm Wikipdia, user pages can and should be regulated. -- 65.8.5.246 23:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC) -- Dalbury^(Talk) 23:43, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

My two cents

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:

• Revise the introduction to the Wikipedia:Userboxes page. It almost invites people to play with userboxes. "Common uses for boxes include user interests, user skills, technical information, Wikipedia activities, or just for fun." A more NPOV introduction would add the drawbacks that concern some editors.

• Contribute an essay on the pros and cons of Userboxes to Category:Wikipedia essays.

• Promote alternatives to Userboxes. People who want self-expression could post lists of their travels instead. That sort of information doesn't convey POV and may be relevant to editing. Durova 09:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Very nicely said. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 11:36, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I second Durova's motion to table this proposal. I also support his proposal to revise the Wikipedia:Userboxes page, although I guess that needs to be moved to Wikipedia talk:Userboxes. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 16:42, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

• I third Durova's suggestion. Herostratus 19:48, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

---

Poll

Table this discussion for three months. Encourage moderation as an alternative to policy change.

Support

1. Durova 20:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
2. Dalbury^(Talk) 21:12, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
3. Herostratus 10:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
4. Ian13/talk, By no means have other avenues been exploited 10:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
5. Larix 11:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Opposed

1. Esseye 06:05, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Polls are evil

1. This poll question is too broad. I don't think that a new CSD to delete templates at will is really something we should "wait and see works" if we don't want rampant userbox deletion. Yes, we should table the proposal; but no, we should not wait and see if the current options will work; they are no good. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Comments

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)

Organizations normally try lesser solutions before crafting new policy. I don't mean to gag anyone - it's just that no consensus has emerged and the dialogue often turned bitter. BTW my only participation in this discussion has been the move to table. Durova 22:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Then stop talking for now, and, by all means, suggest other do the same. But it is absurd to vote to stop a discussion. How are you going to enforce it? If a minority wants to keep talking they are at liberty to do it. I havn't contributed to this discussion since the beginign, because I think it is doomed, but let those who want to talk do so. --Doc ^ask? 22:55, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

This would move the proposal to the inactive discussion list for three months. People who still wish to communicate there would be welcome to do so. Durova 22:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding images

• Maybe it should be limited to imaged already uploaded to Wikipedia. Hohohob 11:40, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Many of the problem images have legitimate uses elsewhere, and so were already uploaded when first used in userboxes. The big issues with images in userboxes have been the use of copywrited images under claims of 'fair use', which is not allowed in user space by policy, and the use of images which support a political, religious or otherwise 'polemical' point of view in userboxes. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Mass Deletion

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:

• Userboxes split up our community into categories,
• Userboxes cost money, especially ones with images,
• Userboxes do not help to improve our encyclopedia.

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)

Thank you for exposing the sheer sneakiness of the anti-userbox, pro-censorship side of this debate. --Daniel 17:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Monitor TfD

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)

And I urge people who have better sense to go there to combat this flagrant attempt at vote-stacking. --Daniel 17:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Read what I said again: "dislike userboxes of some form or another". That means that some people from here will dislike such things as the pedophile template, but will vote keep for others. violet/riga (t) 17:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed policy that might actually get somewhere!

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)

Complete agreement. Does this mean we would migrate non-conforming templates out of template space into user space?--Chris 04:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

As in, political ones? Umm... bring that up on the proposal's talk page, I can't speak for everyone. Ashibaka tock 04:52, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Right, silly me.--Chris 04:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of divisive userboxes

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)

• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion

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)

It's sneaky because we are actively discussing this elsewhere. Let me also remind you that Jimbo doesn't run the place. This is quickly degrading to a forest fire. 69.143.133.51 02:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC) (that'd be me... aa v ^ 02:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC))

Actually, Jimbo does run the place. --Tony Sidaway 05:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Sort of. Jimbo is the chairman of a non-profit organization. As such, there are certain restrictions on the function and goals of the encyclopedia. The second this becomes "Jimbo's encyclopedia", it loses its status. And, that would suck for Mr. Wales given the amount of cash flowing in here. That'd be, let's see, something like $160,000 in income taxes? The point here, Tony, is that Jimbo is a shepherd of the organization. However, it is most definitely run by its (american, tax-paying) users. aa v ^ 17:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Nope. Jimbo and the Foundation own the servers. Therefore, they run the place. They allow us to edit on their private property out of the goodness of their hearts. Once money is donated to them, they are free to do what they like. There is no contractual obligation for them to listen to the donors. Johnleemk | Talk 17:29, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay, let's try that out. So they could take their half-a-million-dollars and open a whorehouse, right? How about start a new search engine? The point is, the tax payers are paying for the servers, bandwidth, et cetera. Because of this, there are stipulations as to the way the funds will be used. Look at the ranks of a given non-profit organization. None of them are autocracies. aa v ^ 18:08, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You seem to think that only American tax payers donate to the foundation. The donations in fact come from many countries. The foundation is free to use the money in any way that is consistent with the terms of their tax-exempt status, and that is pretty broad. And I know many non-profits that are ruled with a much heavier hand than the Foundation uses (I used to work for one). -- Dalbury^(Talk)

That is absolutely correct. You have a very poor understanding of law. The government does not fund Wikipedia; individual donors do. Therefore, the Wikimedia Foundation has no strings attached to the money it spends. If they open a Wikimedia Whorehouse, we can complain, but they aren't obliged to listen to us. Also, because this is a private organisation, it can be run whatever way it likes. It is, essentially, an autocracy. Johnleemk | Talk 03:58, 8 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)

The real core question is: In the context of making an encyclopedia, what purpose is userspace supposed to serve? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, WP:UP says that user pages are meant to "facilitate communication among participants" and "help us to build the community" which "helps to build the encyclopedia". With that in mind, and going back to my original question, I can't imagine what kind of "communication" is being facilitated, or what kind of "community" is being built, by offending and dividing people. Anyone care to answer this? Bi 18:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Some editors, like myself, prefer to see other editors be up front about their biases on their user pages. This helps me understand their edits in better context. Moreover, causes (however controversial) do indeed foster communities—some of the problems that people have pointed out with userboxes and categories is that they make it easy for people with radical or unpopular opinions to work together to push minority agendas. Of course, not all communities are as controversial. Personally I love browsing Wikipedians by interest, and recognizing other editors makes editing and discussing things more human. Brighterorange 18:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, your preconceptions are one-sided. You presume that stating a preference in an opinion is merely divisive. But at the same time, it is organizing in that those with like perspectives can affiliate. And even better, but it can help those attempting to reach NPOV to find people from both sides of a spectrum, making [for the enemy] either unnecessary or at least easier. We're here to write an encyclopedia, not unite the peoples of the world. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 22:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I have seen templated userboxes used in an attempt to push a POV in an article. Can you point me to an example where users with opposing viewpoints have been recruited through userboxes with the purpose of reaching an NPOV article? -- Dalbury^(Talk) 22:50, 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 you haven't been following the debate, there are three main classes of objection to some userboxes: they can be used to insult and offend people, they can be used to polarise discussions, and they can be used in poll-stacking operations. Deleting userboxes may help tilt wikipedia away from the rule of the mob and towards the rule of reason. Reasonable people may and do disagree about this, but it's surprising that anyone is still ignorant about the case against userboxes. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 17:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Cool Cats view on userboxes

If I were determining the guidelines regarding userboxes:

1. Userboxes must have a purpose. Userboxes are out there for people to easy access peoples talents and abilities. The language userboxes for example are usefull when one seeks someone speaking a language.
2. Infuriating userboxes must be deleted on sight. Trolls are not welcome on wikipedia. If people are here to entertain themselves by angering otherwise good contributors not only their userboxes speedied but the people should also be blocked indefinately.
3. Political userboxes, reflecting ones view on contraversial and/or political issues should be deleted on sight.
   • I for one am less than willing to debate/discuss Israel-Palestine issue with people who experess their views via userboxes (aka people campaigning for a cause). I picked this spesific incident at random. I personaly dont care what happens to Israel or Palestine before anyone asks.
   • Contraversial and political issues are by nature sensative not just for you but for others. Please be sensative enough to purge your views so as not to cause a ruckus.
   • Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. It is not a political simulator. For that get Superpower 2.
4. Humorous userboxes, in my view are fine. Although userboxes should not be used for every joke. It might be best to have these userboxes in usernamespace.
5. Religion userboxes, are somewhat OK. I dont care about religion myself. In my view religion userboxes are bad taste because they practicaly cut you off of all religon articles aside from those of your own religion. Again this should be in userspace not template space.

--Cool Cat^Talk|@ 01:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

• CoolCat - as one who's thinking has actually evolved considerably over the past weeks due to discussion, refelection, and (a little) study, I basically agree with you. Formerly believing that userboxes should be basically unfettered, I now believe that there should be significant restrictions. Points: #7 is correct and supercedes #1; its important that the merely silly be permitted, for morale reasons etc. Also -- I have come the the reluctant conclusion, having been told such several times, that it's not possible to draw a line between positive-and-OK and troublesome-and-not-OK userboxes in the area of religion and politics. Therefore all in those two areas must go. This frosts me, because my "user is a Unitarian Universalist" and "user believes in democratic institutions" are as beneficial as may be -- yet I have removed them, and urge all others to remove all political and religious userboxes of any stripe. Herostratus 12:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

• • Would you agree that the sexuality userboxes should go as well? --Chris 15:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

• • Qualifications of "good POV" and "bad POV" are themselves POV. POV systems create POV output. Let's not make a POV system. Judgement and value calls on POVs are POV. So let's not do that. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:38, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

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)

Woh woh woh... before you in your infinite maturity teach everyone else how to "grow up" and "find out what the real world is like", do tell us which alternate universe you're from. Seriously, "we" fought in WW2? (I'm quite sure you didn't.) And the deliberate spelling reforms of Noah Webster are just "spelling errors mistaken as dialect"? Which reality did you get these from? But surprisingly, I sort of agree with your point above. There's no really clear line between political and religious beliefs, so it's best not to classify beliefs along these lines. Bi 05:30, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I dont remember saying anything about WW2, but ok...Thanx for your agreement on Religious and Political userboxes. You're right, there is no real clear line dividing the two types, so both should be treated the same (hopefully kept) - • | Đܧ§§Ť | • ^{T | C} 15:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

"Infuriating" is very POV-dependant. For example, an "anti-UN" userbox was deleted after some users found it incendiary. However, I find animal-rights statements to be pretty annoying myself and there's half a dozen userboxes for that. That example goes for almost all of your other points too. Rexmorgan 06:42, 14 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 exactly?

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)

Userboxes do make a difference in articlespace when they are used to rally users of a given persuasion to push a POV, as has happened. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 18:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

However, to the best of my knowledge that has never happened --T-rex 18:45, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gay rights in Iraq and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Catholic Alliance of wikipedia. It was these incidents which precipitated this whole battle over userboxe3s. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 19:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Which only illustrates that certain POVs seem to have a strong tendency to organize. This would happen with or without userboxes. The argument is that userboxes may make it easier for POVs to organize. Therefore we should go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. In other words let's make it difficult for people to organize, because people organizing is "bad". Userboxes are a scapegoat to the desires of adamant POVs to impose their beliefs. That is a much bigger problem than deleting userboxes can fix. It happens elsewhere without the benefit of userboxes. Really, in fact, the problem with organizing is not userboxes at all, but POV user categories. While userboxes are a delivery mechanism for categories, they are by no means the only method. If POV userboxes are outlawed, they will be replaced with POV user categories. And when POV user categories are outlawed, they will be replaced with a list of (insert POV)ian Wikipedians. And when those lists are outlawed, theyll be replaced with http://wikipedia-(insert POV)ians.com. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, who has had any decent experience with the Internet ought to know just how fruitless trying to regulate speech online will be. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:47, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad someone can finally tell me where this whole nonsence started. However, I don't see how these issues are related to userboxes, especially the first one. Also I am rather disturbed to see how long user Tony Sidaway has been deleting things instead of respecting votes. I still don't feel that the userboxes were to blame for this mess though --T-rex 20:28, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

The users who recruited other users in an attempt to swamp the deletion discussions located the other users through the userboxes (I'm not sure if they looked at the category where any entry was created by the template in the userbox, or if they checked what links here on the userbox template). In any case, these (and other incidents) drew the attention of a lot of people to the very large expansion of POV userboxes over the past few months. POV userboxes have been abused, and I see nothing to prevent them from being abused in the future under the current system. Wikipedia worked just fine for several years without all these political and religious userboxes. They add nothing to Wikipedia, and they have proven to be a threat to maintaining NPOV in article space. If people want to state their political and/or religious affiliations/preferences on their user pages, that's fine. But using templates to place such userboxes opens the way to widespread abuse of POV pushing. Move the userboxes to user space, and eliminate the templates and categories, and it will be harder for POV pushers to gather recruit new supporters. Long term, I suspect that if the community doesn't confine POV to user space, and some minority of users continues to try to use template space for POV purposes, we'll all lose out. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 20:57, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Technically, I believe Template: is an encyclopedic namespace. User: is the only non-encyclopedic one. ~MDD4696 23:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfounded. Template: includes templates that do not go in article space. It includes templates for Wikipedia: space and Talk: space. It is a functional space. No one goes to Template: looking for encyclopedic content, but for administrative and organizational aids. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:49, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but some users don't see it that way, or don't care. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 23:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Is that all this is about? Where the templates are stored? I have always based if POV was allowed by where the template was used, instead of where the templates source code is used. However, if that is the only problem, just move all this into the user space and make this discussion go away. --T-rex 00:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

No, templates will not be moved to userspace. But templates just produce code when invoked. If you subst: a template, you end up with code on the page that is no longer linked to the template. You can code a 'userbox' without ever involving a template. Of course, it's easier to start with Template:Userbox and add whatever you want to it. Anybody can do that now; I had several on my user page for a while that I rolled myself, and still have some that I have subst:ed and then modified. It's not particularly difficult, and a user could copy a userbox they like from another user. Without a template, though, it would not be possible to see a list of the users that were using the userbox. That would eliminate the concern about userboxes being used to recruit for POV pushing campaigns. It would also get the POV messages out of template space and keep them in uyser space, where they belong. The proposal at Wikipedia:Use of userboxes would leave only babel boxes and Template:Userbox as templates. Users would to make their own custom userboxes, or borrow someoneelse's design for everything else. And, of course, if they go ahead and subst: all the useboxes on their pages now, they could keep them without any futher effort. Notice that this does not change anything about what users can have on their user pages (except for the links back to templates). -- Dalbury^(Talk) 01:42, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Disclaimer: The above is not what was proposed at Wikipedia:Use of userboxes, it's what I wish had been proposed. I guess I didn't read it carefully enough the first time. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 12:55, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

A lot of people would have a LOT less concern about POV-pushing if it was made more difficult (removing categories, using neutral images) to use POV userboxes for ill-gotten gain. The argument that "we can't prevent all abuses of vote-stacking, so we shouldn't even try" is not persuasive. If we can't agree to demolish all POV userboxes, this neutering is something I could live with and support. I'm confused on exactly which of the 11 proposals would encompass this now, however.... *rolls eyes* -- nae'blis _(talk) 23:00, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

In line with Jimbo's request, I'll be happy if we can get a volunteer campaign moving to stop using polemical userboxes. I believe that the vast majority of Wikipedians don't want to see users polarized by the display of polemical positions and have articles attacked by POV-pushing groups. I also believe that a lot of Wikipedians aren't really aware that this is an issue. I see at least four issues that threaten the integrity of Wikipeda to various degrees:

1. Userboxes (and categories) being used to recruit for POV-pushing campaigns.
2. The display of political, religious and other polemical userboxes promoting a feeling of belonging to a specific group rather than to Wikipedia.
3. The colossal waste of time, effort and talent being spent on the proliferation of unwanted and useless userboxes.
4. The increase in trolling with userboxes, by deliberately creating confrontational and disruptive userboxes.

The first issue would be addressed by de-templatizing userboxes. The fourth issue can be addressed by the speedy deletion provision that has been adopted (at Jimbo's insistence). The middle two issues will, IMHO, be harder to address. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 00:27, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Good question, Keith, but yes, it clearly does make a difference. We can't successfully collaborate on and create the high-quality free encyclopedia we're striving for here unless we can get along as editors, and this usebox flap is a prima facie example of a way in which editors are, rightly or wrongly, failing miserably to get along. So we have to have ways of dealing with or preventing this kind of conflict, because if left to its own to escalate (as this kind of conflict, alas, always does), a conflict like this spills over and starts affecting, not only the working relationship between editors, but the quality of the articles themselves. Steve Summit (talk) 01:19, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes only if they further the project's goal

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)

KillSubst them. KillSubst them all.

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. JDoorjam Talk 03:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

While I'm a huge defender of userboxes, and I would looooooove to have a central repository for all of them, unfortunatley, I must admit that your entire proposal makes entirely too much sense for me to disagree with it. I actually had thought of this on my own but kept my mouth shut for fear that it might actually get adopted. Damn you!  ;-) Lawyer2b 01:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

What do you do when some user decides to make a "central repository" on one of their sub-userpages and it becomes known as the defacto "central repository"? Lawyer2b 01:27, 15 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). JDoorjam Talk 03:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Give them some time

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)

'UserTemplate:(blah)'

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 of now, it wouldn't matter: Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Clarification_of_templates - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 00:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Define what are bad POV on WP.

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)

Ideally, we won't have any points of view expressed in userboxes. They're of most use when expressing an interest or skill relevant to your work on Wikipedia, such as your knowledge of a foreign language, your professional skills, your education and whatnot. Wikipedia isn't a user homepage provider, but it may sometimes be appropriate to put something a bit more personal on your userpage, but you can hardly do that by the use of prefabricated text inserted into boxes. The way to describe yourself is to use the same skill you bring to editing the encyclopedia: writing in English. --Tony Sidaway 00:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I could do like US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart did ("I shall not today attempt to further define pornography...but I know it when I see it."), but instead I will note that many userboxes are like little propaganda posters, intended to manipulate the viewers emotions. I therefore would say that any POV is out of place in userboxes, and agree with Tony's comments on what is appropriate in userboxes. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 01:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes for operating systems used are effectively POV. Babel boxes aren't. If we are going down theat path the division seems to be (self assesed) capability - "this user is a carpenter" is OK, "this user likes carpenters" isn't. The distinction becomes fine: "this user knows about Linux" is good "this user uses Linux" is bad. Rich Farmbrough. 01:19, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

A symptom of some bigger, harder issues

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:

1. I must do what I can, within reason, not to annoy or offend my fellows.
2. I must not go out of my way to be offended by my fellows.

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)

I was just thinking today of the parallels of this conflict with the tragedy of the commons. Essentially, something held in common, such as Wikipedia, works only as long as everyone exercises self-restraint. A few unrestrained persons can ruin things for everyone. Our task is to find a way to prevent that without becoming bound up in rules. As Jimbo has said, we need to change the culture of Wikipedia, to get everyone to understand why self-restraint is vital to the success of Wikipedia, and to get those who will not accept that to leave us alone. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 02:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

See also this classic: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy by Clay Shirky. I am a student of community and I have seen this pattern or variants over and over. In some ways it is remarkable how successful Wikipedia is, how large it has grown, most communities don't get this far. Perhaps part of it is the deliberate repetition by participants of what WP is not... not a community (it may not be intended to be, but it is!), not an experiment in democracy, or anarchy, etc. ++Lar: t/c 03:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

A very interesting read! It gives me some things to think about. Thanks for posting that link. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 03:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I've always thought that despite WP:NOT a social experiment, it's a pretty damn good resource for any student of sociology (and I'm not talking about the quality of our sociology articles). Anyway, WRT the link Lar posted, I think it's pretty good. I especially liked the conclusion that people are both groups and individuals (and the two can never be extricated). Some portions also appear possibly relevant -- for instance, because Wikipedia has no visible enemy except vandals (who aren't much of an enemy), most people within Wikipedia start to factionalise. People blame the people on AfD/the deletionists/the inclusionists/the userbox fanboys/the jackbooted fascist admins/Jimbo/people who don't heed Jimbo and argue endlessly about them because Wikipedia has no external enemy to rally against. Anyway, I'm rather lazy to talk sociology or bother about userboxen, so I guess I'll stop rambling...now. Johnleemk | Talk 09:30, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Let me break out my favorite two graphs, to show why wikipedia is so solid at its basis:

• Image:Articles_distinct.png
• Image:Articles_distinct_histo.png

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)

Some more discussion on this has happened at my talk page, I've half a mind to refactor it back here as some excellent points were raised. And ya, good observation about article authorship. I bet you'll see the same thing in wikipediaspace (even metapedians compartmentalise) ++Lar: t/c 11:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:UUB

• Check out WP:UUB. IMO, that is the way forward... at least for now.

Deano (Talk) 12:33, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Quadell's Proposal

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)

• I've been saying this since nearly the beginning; neuter the POV and keep your precious userboxes, otherwise check your POV at the door. Userpages/talk pages are here to build the encyclopedia, so while they're not strictly subject to WP:NPOV, they should aspire to it. Of course, to solve the vote-stacking arguments, pictures should be neutralized as well (to avoid problems with Whatlinkshere), and categories removed, on anything that could be remotely POV. Express yourself all you want/need to, but the bumper-stickers are pointless, offensive, and distracting. This should be common sense, but we have a small contingent fighting for their 'rights'. I'm sorry if I'm getting less civil as time wears on, but this is detracting from building an encyclopedia. -- nae'blis _(talk) 16:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• • Amen, brother! -- Dalbury^(Talk) 18:30, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• • • Another Amen!. CG 18:44, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• A qualified Amen:
  • I believe that userboxes can help us get to know the editors we are working with, which helps build a sense of community, which helps write an encyclopedia;
  • I believe that user pages need not be neutral; and
  • I believe that, the recent round of deletions has been handled very poorly, and has been far more divisive than the userboxes ever were.

• On the other hand:
  • I believe that there is no inherent, unlimited right to freedom of speech and expression on Wikipedia;
  • I believe there needs to be a clear difference between encyclopedic and non-encyclopedic userboxes, where "encyclopedic" userboxes list areas of expertise and interest only, and "non-encyclopedic" userboxes constitute everything else;
  • I believe only encyclopedic content, including userboxes, should be templates, and all other userboxes should be raw code on user pages;
  • I believe only encyclopedic userboxes should have categories integrated into them; and
  • I believe that truly divisive, inflammatory userboxes, which are simply soapbox-in-a-box, should be deleted whether they are templates or simply raw code on a page.

Truly, JDoorjam Talk 19:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

And I think this would be a good solution. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 19:33, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• A strong Amen to nae'blis. I'll offend some people by saying this, but for the most part, userboxes are just silly. The harm they've begun to cause by their proliferation is much larger than the benefits they're said to offer. But that's beside the point, really: rampant ideological or political posturing on one's user page would be a problem whether or not it was encapsulated in little boxes. The question of whether we condone or attempt to ban userboxes is really immaterial to the more important question of whether we sit back and watch Wikipedia get Balkanized into infinitely many little squabbling factions, or whether we insist that people, as nae'blis put it, check their POV at the door. Steve Summit (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Slaps on the back asides, I Support this proposal. --InShaneee 04:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• I support Quadell's proposal as well. I have a user box that stating that I'm a physician not as a bias but as an explanation of my qualifications. I would add that In addition to templates, I would oppose hard-coded user boxes as well. I don't have any problem with people discussing their biases on their user pages, but what I do object to is having in packaged form that doesn't allow for explanation of the bias, and that is easily copied from person to person. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

"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."

How does it cause any trouble? The ONLY people it seems to cause trouble for is those who somehow believe that Wikipedia has to be stripped of all individuality and uniqueness, driving away the Wikipedian Core in the process. If people want to create templates outside of the encyclopedic entries, and then express themselves on their own given space, that is no business of yours. Wikipedia is not for authoritarian busybodies. Stop trying to rip peoples face off for being human.

MSTCrow 10:50, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Stop speaking for other people like the "Wikipedian Core". Speak for yourself, Mr. Individualist. Bi 17:00, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: Specifics not blankets

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)

And that would lead to endless debate over where the limit is, with editors testing the limits and trying to push them, so that you will end trying to justify why one userbox has to go while another almost identical one can stay. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 23:52, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

What Jimbo said about userboxes in the Signpost interview

Today I took the opportunity of an interview on IRC, organised by The Signpost, to ask Jimbo about userboxes:

Feb 15 16:53:49 Ral315 Tony_Sidaway asks: "In the past six weeks the number of userboxes on English Wikipedia has risen from 3500 to 6000 and, despite your appeals for restraint, the number pertaining to political beliefs has risen from 45 to 150. Can the problem of unsuitable userboxes still be resolved by debate?"

Feb 15 17:11:57 jwales eh

Feb 15 17:11:59 jwales userboxes

Feb 15 17:12:00 jwales eh

Feb 15 17:12:40 jwales I'm looking at the political beliefs one now.

Feb 15 17:13:50 jwales My only comment on the userbox situation is that the current situation is not acceptable.

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)

With all due respect, I feel like he didn't say anything at all here. In fact, this is far less of a statement than the establishment of T1 was in the first place. He didn't even say what "the userbox situation" is; the things he finds "not acceptable" could, based on previous comments, also include the divisive debates and out-of-process deletions that have gone on. This is precisely why there's an ongoing controversy, and why good editors are spending wasting time debating userboxes instead of writing an encyclopedia: Jimbo hasn't really given us any guidance at all. The workable solutions, such as what's been crafted up in the "Quadell's proposal" section, will take top-down implementation, not top-down hope that we can fix it from the bottom up. Because of a lack of guidance, T1 has been far more divisive than any userbox has ever been.JDoorjam Talk 12:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a lot of merit in that view. Right now I think many of us would almost rather see a top down imposition of some policy (any policy) than multiple competing, and strife causing, interpretations of what in some cases are rather ambiguous statements. This one (which for whatever reason has been widely plastered) is extremely ambiguous because it states an obvious truth, but not why it's true, or what to do about it. So we are left with competing interpretations. ++Lar: t/c 13:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that to some extent, there's been policy on this all along. The problem of soapboxing and grandstanding and excessive opinionating on user pages (whether encapsulated in userboxes or otherwise) is one of the reasons that the user page guidelines at WP:USER have always said that your user page is not a "home page", that the information you put there about yourself is to be limited to that which helps in building an encyclopedia. Steve Summit (talk) 16:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

What Jimbo said about userboxes on wikien-l

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)

I heard today that the number of userboxes, and in particular the number of very problematic userboxes, has exploded. I think this is seriously Not Good For Our Loving Little Community.

I am not doing anything about it just yet, but I am willing to concede that my nonviolent social request that people knock it off and think about what it means to be a Wikipedian has not gotten very far.

As far as I can determine, and I am very much aware that I am here prejudicing the terms of debate, this is a cultural battle between wikipedians and people who have stumbled into this cool site they heard about on CNN where you can write whatever the hell you want and argue with people for fun.

Full version at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-February/039853.html

--Tony Sidaway 06:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Wishful thinking asside, I think it's pretty clear what Jimbo thinks about templates and categories that describe your POV and express your biases. He's agin' 'em. And he's against them because he thinks they harm our community. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 14:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I still like Jimbo's origional suggestion that users who understand the need for change volentarally remove them from their own page and encourage others to do the same. If people stopped trying to delete all bad userboxes and force this upon people, I believe that Jimbo's origional idea would work. It's a shame the many editors believe that new policy has to be written to decide everything, and that people can't just get along, with out forever trying to prove that they are right. I think for those editors who are activlly working to creaate wikipedia and making positive edits, that any POV on user pages will not carry over to writing articales. And for those that are only looking to cause trouble, it dosn't matter what they have on their user page, as most honest wikipedians don't trust them to start with. --T-rex 18:14, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Litmus tests

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:

• This user is ____ (as is any thinking person)
• This user is ____ (as opposed to all the heathen ____ who are not)
• This user is ____ (and I dare you to be offended by it)
• This user is ____ (and is therefore not one of those damn ____)
• This user is ____ (and you're an idiot if you're not)
• This user is ____ (and you're a censor if you deny my right to say so)

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)

Unless you don't know about them or are otherwise lazy, not having user boxes is POV too.

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)

Thanks for sharing your opinion. You should know, however, that it's an opinion not shared by Jimbo, nor by many admins and people who have been a part of this project for a long time.

Incidently, I see what you're saying about "not choosing is itself a choice", but the principle doesn't apply to POV. Not expressing a POV about something is not, in fact, implicitly expressing a POV. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 14:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I realise that, but you're still expressing a POV about userboxes. And besides, its not as if they've cause any real harm. And besides, if we got rid of them, nothing is stoping us from including such information on our user pages (after all, I think its a better way of telling people who you are than your actual name (which is just as irrelevent and doesn't tell us anything)) and this way its all within easy reference. Lastly if you are going to cull userboxes you should also ban unanonymity all together. QED. --Greasysteve13 00:43, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, the heading does not compute. Lack of putting material on a userpage doesn't mean you are expressing an opinion about it, unless you say "I am not placing userboxes on my userpage because I hate them". By that logic, any single piece of information that could be on your userpage but don't have on your userpage would equate to you hating it. But it is simply not practical to continually include all information you don't dislike on your userpage. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 02:04, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

You're missing the point, perhaps you should read all the text written under the heading. Besides, you could be saying any number of POV things by refusing to put certain things on Page (providing you know they exist or are otherwise not lazy) See bellow:

1. Your POV is that you dont like certain userboxes
2. Your POV is that you dont care
3. Your POV is that you dont want to offend anyone (BTW: someone will always be offeneded regardless of what you do)
4. Your POV is that you dont want to make a commitment
5. And this list goes on and on.

--Greasysteve13 02:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I wondered if that's what you were getting at. Please accept my apologies for all the ways I have offended you with the grievous antiuserbox and don't-care POV pushing evidenced on my user page. --Steve Summit (talk) 02:58, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I was never offended but, I do think some of us should stop being so sensitive.--Greasysteve13 03:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Pro-userbox and Anti-userbox

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)

I think it would actually be less controversial to simply say, "CSD T2: Templates should not be used to express the point of view of Wikipedia editors. Please note that this CSD applies strictly to template space, and not content residing entirely within user space (i.e., subst'd userboxes)."

I'm starting to really hope Big Jim just puts the hammer down here and ends this controversy with some firm policy that simply bans POV userboxes from template space. As it stands, neither side of this ridiculous controversy has the support or authority to win. JDoorjam Talk 15:20, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I suspect "Big Jim" wants to avoid driving away good contributers by apearing overly-heavy-handed. By the way, I'm all for that TSD approach, but it should apply to templates in user space as well - so long as they're being used as templates. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 16:19, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. How strongly is the controversy still raging right now, anyway? (And remember, it's not about "winning" and "losing".) I came to this late, and while things were clearly hot in late January, I'm not sure how many people are still fighting over this today.

If the flames die down, and if the people who are more interested in labeling themselves than in writing an encyclopedia (and who think that the right thing to do when they notice they have too many userboxes is to add a userbox saying they have too many userboxes) get tired of it and drift on over to livejournal or whatever, that's fine. But if they're told they have to go, or that by policy they just can't have their userboxes, they're more likely to raise a hue and cry about censorship and oppression, and that'll cause lots more collateral damage. Steve Summit (talk) 15:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Stance regarding Fair Use images in userboxes

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)

It is probably legal to use copyrighted images under a fair use principle, but it's against Wikipedia policy to use fair use images outside article space. According to both Jimbo and the arbcom (unanimously), fair use images should not be used on talk pages, templates, or in userpages. There are a lot of things that are legal but are not acceptable on Wikipedia, and this is one of them. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 21:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

• Quadell; Thanks, and I mean it. I've been asking this question in a number of places and not getting a response. Perhaps I wasn't clear; I'm already aware of the policy. I'm looking for a citable decision on this. Given the recent hot debates regarding userboxes, I fully expect there to be major resistance to removing group logos from userboxes (ex: {{User Elks}}, {{User Pythias}}, {{User Rotary}} and many, many more). I did so on just one userbox yesterday and was shortly thereafter called a "tag nazi". The derision does not bother me. What bothers me is the storm that could develop over this if there is no referenceable, citable decision in this matter on which to operate. Is there such a thing? --Durin 21:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Fair use#Fair use policy. That section is official policy, and sub-section 9 says:

9. Fair use images should only be used in the article namespace. Used outside article space, they are often enough not covered under the fair use doctrine. They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages. They should be linked, not inlined, from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion. This is because it is the policy of the Wikimedia Foundation to allow an unfree image only if no free alternative exists and only if it significantly improves the article it is included on. All other uses, even if legal under the fair use clauses of copyright law, should be avoided to keep the use of unfree images to a minimum. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis if there is a broad consensus that doing so is necessary to the goal of creating a free encyclopedia (like the templates used as part of the Main Page).

I hope that helps. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 22:38, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, it does. Based on that, I'm going to start removing fair use images from userboxes (in particular, logos). --Durin 22:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Dangerous distraction

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)

The links created by POV userboxes have been used in attempts to insert POV into articles. This is a threat to the integrity of Wikipedia. The POV userboxes encourage editors to think of themselves as members of some group instead of as Wikipedians. This is also a threat to the integrity of Wikipedia. It is the abuse of userboxes and of the privileges granted user space that is dangerous. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 20:56, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

We are all members of many groups in adition to being Wikipedians. Enforming some giant uniformity sounds to me both impractical and extremly dangerous. Will we go after Wikiprojects, Regional noticeboards and other such items now?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 00:03, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not looking for uniformity, But I am concerned about anything that threatens the NPOV policy in articles. If any Wikiproject, noticeboard or such becomes a means for pushing NPOV, then it will have to be dealt with, as well. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Catholic Alliance of wikipedia for an example of the kind of problem I'm talking about. There is a very real threat to the integrity of Wikipedia in these kinds of actions. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 00:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Piotrus, we have always allowed users a great deal of leeway on their user pages. However, this is such a big issue to enough people that we need to address it now. It's sort of an old-guard vs. new-user issues, to an extent. I myself used to believe in an almost completely hands-off policy on userboxes, but I don't anymore, because 1) I have been persuaded somewhat by arguments, such as Dalbury's above, and 2) it seems very important to some people, and we should respect that. Because its not really that important, so if a bunch of people are gonna go nuts about it, enh, fine, let them have a policy. Herostratus 01:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Hello, personal user pages ARE NOT Wikipedia articles! There is a very real threat to the Wikipedia community when, under the guise of professional interest, users such as Dalbury seek to crush dissenting viewpoints and individualist sentiments. Wake up, or Wikipedia is going to lose most of its editors.

Oh, by the way, the ability to express ourselves in our userpages is very important to us Free Wikipedians.

MSTCrow 10:59, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

So by identifying yourself with the community of GWB haters/Democrat Party supporters/McDonald's consumers/whatever, you are showing your individualism? ^_^ Johnleemk | Talk 11:43, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow! I've been accused of a lot of things, but that's a first. For the record, I don't particularly care what you put on your user page as long as it doesn't violate current policy, with the exception that I do care if you display POV userboxes created by templates which allow recruiting for POV-pushing. Subst: all you POV userboxes, or even better, create your own individualized userboxes. Just don't make templates out of them. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 12:59, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

This might be a good solution for the current situation. I agree wikipedia shouldn't be a place for POV pushing or making POV-based groups. So, i think it is ok to delete POV templates on the conditions that ALL POV templates are deleted and it is made clear that users can recreate the userboxes at their user pages. Some admins e.g Pathoschild and Ilmari Karonen are doing a great job by replacing deleted userboxes at user pages. --Wedian 21:08, 19 February 2006 (UTC)