[WikiEN-l] More editing of user pages, please (was Arbcom has completely lost its mind)

Thu Feb 9 20:22:46 UTC 2006

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Kat Walsh

> User pages don't belong to the user, they belong to the 
> project. It's been generally beneficial to let people have a 
> fair bit of leeway with this, as Matt said: it aids 
> communication and makes people happy. But ultimately, if you 
> want unrestricted free speech, this isn't the place; it 
> belongs on your own personal website. If you want to be part 
> of this project, you are expected to follow community 
> standards, and if you don't like them, to try to change them 
> rather than act against them.

An editor's user page should present the editor AS A WIKIPEDIAN. It's where
people go if they click on a user name. If someone wants to check on your
contributions to what is supposed to be a serious fact-filled encyclopaedia,
then how they judge your edits may well be affected by how they are struck
by your user page.

I'd be inclined to question the validity of statements made in articlespace
if the editor had a user page saying that he believed in alien abduction,
flatearthness, tolerance for paedophilia and, yeah, freedom of speech.

In fact I'd probably say to myself, if I didn't know any better, "This thing
is being written by fork-tailed ranting lunatics!"

Peter (Skyring)