On 1/4/06, Nathan Russell <windrunner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Oh I completely agree. The babel boxes, etc, indeed most userboxes, are fine. Some may be used for attacks and must be deleted. Some promote factionalism by providing a handy directory for the pushers of various points of view (I have identified three such cases in the past three weeks) and they must also go. I don't thinkk we need be overly concerned about "powered by alcohol" and other joky stuff.

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Nathan Russell wrote: I have to agree with Nathan here. The arguments I've seen for the thesis "Userboxes are bad" include: * they misuse wikipedia's Fair Use guidelines * they enable zealots with similar POVs to find each other * they cause divisiveness * they are an unnecessary burden on the servers * there are Wikipedians who spend more time on Userboxes than on contributing to the rest of Wikipedia All of these arguments can be dealt with effectively on a case-by-case basis. No template or userbox should have Fair Use images: Jimbo has spoken & that should be that. People of the same POV have always found each other on Wikipedia, & Userboxes are hardly a powerful new tool to accomplish this. If a userbox can be construed as a personal attack (e.g., "This use believes anyone who uses MS Windows is lame"), then it should be shot on sight. No one has supplied any details on how Userboxes effect the servers. This would be something important to know -- & decisive in this matter; by this, if I mean if Userboxes could be shown to have a measurable effect on the servers, then the developers should disable this feature, end of argument. If they have no measurable effect on the servers, then I find it hard to worry much about them. As for the matter that some Wikipedians spend more time on Userboxes than contributing content, if this is the case then someone needs to have a talk with the person & explain that the goal of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia -- not a web page with lots of cute & colorful Userboxes. If they refuse to get with the program, then perhaps the solution then would be to either treat them like a vandal or haul them before the ArbCom for an official banning. (And if anyone is curious, I can identify one person who falls into this category -- so there are people with accounts on Wikipedia who need to get with the program.) Honestly, I don't see how putting a couple of userboxes on one's user page transforms the average Wikipedian into some drooling, lamer noob who uses Wikipedia only to hang with his bro's & to pick fights with his unkewl rivals. And for the record, while I have a few of these things on my User page, I find this phenomena silly -- like Sailor Moon anime, teen-aged Republicans, & people who can't understand the difference between "your" & "you're". However, I can cheerfully ignore it & spend my time on more important matters, like compiling material in order to add to Wikipedia an article on every population center in Ethiopia. Indeed, I've spent about an hour writing this email that I could have devoted to this project; I wonder how many more hours have been squandered on this subject. Well this is my last email on the matter -- if I can help it. If I post to this thread again, I'll have to find some suitable way to do penance for my weakness. Geoff

On 1/5/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: They haven't targeted me yet. -- geni

On 1/7/06, Wikiacc <wikiacc(a)gmail.com> wrote: For what it's worth, I don't think disbanding the project without creating some kind of guideline for future userboxes would be a good idea. The project has standardized what was before a haphhazard collection of template naming schemes and such. What they did needed to be done, and I think it'd be an insult to all who worked on it to allow it to get back to the way it was. -- I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.

On 1/4/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote: If their actions are not detrimental to the encyclopedia as a whole, why should they be ArbCommed? This seems like an overreaction to me. There's no reason someone who just makes userboxes should be forced to leave. Honestly, I don't see how putting a couple of userboxes on one's user As another food for thought, does this make any admin with a userbox on their userpage a useless admin? I've seen that argument being bandied about. --Jay Converse (Mo0) -- I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.

So what are you saying? It should be *hard* for Wikipedians to find others with similar interests? This whole argument seems to resemble others I've heard. It's like one put up by firearm enthusiasts when attacked with the argument that firearms should be banned because many are used to commit crimes. They retaliate by saying that cars should be banned because so many are used to commit crimes. People actually die in traffic accidents, they say. Cars are killers, they say. Userboxes aren't Wikipedia-killers. Maybe they are being abused. Maybe. But if so, isn't the *real* problem the abusers, not the tools they use? A few days ago, I raised the notion of Google or Microsoft creating their own online user-edited encyclopaedia if we tried to get them to pay for Wikipedia's expenses. Two or three people said that sure, they could do this, but they wouldn't get the Wikipedia community. The community aspect of Wikipedia is vitally important. In fact it's one of the marvels of the Internet, to see such a grand project being constructed as a co-operative effort. To my mind, anything that increases community bonds without detracting from the main objective is something that should be encouraged. If there is a problem with userboxes, then it should be discussed and managed, rather than adopt the simplistic "ban everything" approach. Peter (Skyring)

Campaigning for what, precisely? It seems to me that Wikipedia is very good as an encyclopaedia compared with everything else on the web, and very poor as a dating service, blog site, chess-playing site etc when compared to other sites. Do people really come here for these secondary reasons when there are other, better places available? Peter (Skyring)

http://www.wikidating.net On 1/5/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I think it's inevitable that given the high profile Wikipedia is increasingly having, more people are getting involved - and a smaller proportion of them are highly interested in developing an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is in one of the "top sites" spots now, like it or not. It's interesting to consider that perhaps one of the reasons WHY Wikipedia has been successful is that it doesn't encourage and facilitate too much inter-user interaction outside of working on articles. It's possibly a good thing that we don't have inter-user mail, a chat system, or a bulletin board built in to the site. -Matt

Matt Brown wrote: We don't? Special:Emailuser, Wikipedia IRC channel, and Village Pump. :] Maybe not those things 'built in' exactly, but close enough.

While I like what Jimbo said, and what he agreed w Tony Sidaway regarding, I should hope he doesn't agree w tony on the following: One pretty good way to find out would be to take away the user categories and see how many people leave. If they mostly stay, we've gotten rid of things that facilitate the abuse of Wikipedia. If they mostly leave, we've unshipped people who were here for the wrong reasons. Either way is a win. This is not only completely illogical, it underscores how out of touch admins can get. Intentionally taking away a source of joy from large numbers of users in a bid to see if they'll leave, or if they'll just accept your hegemony over them... thats pretty much the opposite of my recipe for success in a volunteer setting. Sam Spade

Hear hear! I get the feeling that some would turn WP into a police state, sending off undesirables to Gulag 13, and enforcing arbitrary rules down to the last full stop and naming convention. I've seen new editors abused most shamefully for getting things like capitalisation in headings wrong. And then these people wonder why there's grumbling in the ranks. Peter (Skyring)

We agree about harmful or threatening talk page content, altho where do we draw the line? I find communism and satanism threatening myself... As per the clueless newbies, we completely disagree. My opinion is that chasing them off instead of mentoring them damages the project in a way immeasurably greater than user boxes, no matter how stupid they are. Sadly, too many people forget what admins are for. Admins are here to help users, and maintain the project. We should never think things like : "these clueless newbies and their dumb ideas are a real bother to us admins. Lets delete their user boxes and give them a serious scolding! Then maybe they'll go away and us admins won't have so much work to do" Because that is how you kill a volunteer project. Wikipedia is not a social club for admins and old hands, its a growing internet phenomena designed to offer access to the sum total of human knowledge to everyone. To do that, we need more help, not less. Sam Spade On 1/8/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Here's my solution to the userbox problem. Any "userbox" (aka. babel-like template) which does not - Inform the reader about the languages (human) that one can understand and edit in - Inform the reader about the languages (computer) that one is proficient in to some degree and can use those skills constructively towards editing - Inform the reader about what browser/operating system they use so that they can be consulted wrt. technical issues with the wiki - Inform the reader about what musical instruments they play so that Free music can be recorded for articles - Inform the reader about what WikiProjects they are part of so that other editors can consult them about articles related to that wikiproject should be deleted. WikiProject Userboxes should ensure that userboxes remain as things which are useful to other editors, in the task of building an encyclopedia. Such silly things as "This user is a dickbrain with no respect for consensus, policy, copyright issues, or the task of writing an encyclopedia" should be deleted, and the user banned for wasting everyone's time and bandwidth. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

On 1/8/06, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gawab.com> wrote: Yep, and just the one {{userbox}} will do. It can always be substituted. No other set of templates is needed, bar the ones Alphax outlined. Other categories to go with the boxes are also (obviously) unneeded. As stated before (many times) fair use images aren't permissable on userpages. I doubt the userbox fanatics will allow this sensible compromise to pass, however. They're only having fun, after all. They aren't damaging the servers, after all. They aren't being offensive, after all. We should all "lighten up", after all. -- Sam

I think, in the spirit of setting a good example, any admin proponent of this "solution" should first remove all frivolous and unneccessary material from their own user space and adopt such a puritan, holier-than-thou attitude that other editors begin to actively detest them, not invite them to parties etc. Pete, hereby applying for the silver badge and black cloak of the Joke Police

On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay(a)bigpond.com> wrote: Yes, in the sense that they're a problem for Wikipedia.

I appreciate the distinction, but this just moves my question up a notch. Should it be hard for Wikipedians to find others of similar opinions? Nobody expects us to be NPOV as private individuals. So long as the articles are NPOV, that's the big thing. And there are POV groups within Wikipedia already. Homosexual folk seem to stick together and back each other up here. Presumably they all hold similar positive opinions on homosexuality, but I cannot say that I have seen any evidence that the articles they work on are POV as a result. If there is any evidence that Wikipedia is suffering as a result of userboxes, then I'd be keen to see it. But so far it all seems to be a matter of potential rather than actuality, and may I suggest that if the fear is that people are going to misuse AfD to skew consensus, then the problem may very well be with the AfD process rather than with userboxes. Peter (Skyring)

jayjg wrote: I'm assuming this is to me. :) Do you have any solutions? Also, I'd like to have a private chat with you about it. Do you use IRC? My nick is 'Talrias'. Chris