[WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

Tue Jan 3 14:19:50 UTC 2006

I didn't mind them so much: I got into it late, but found them to be a 
source of fun. However, I agree with you: these userboxes have gotten a 
little out of hand. There's no need to make a separate [[Template:User 
some_obscure_thing]] for every little thing. The userboxes that state 
language and other skills are innocuous enough, but userboxes stating 
religion, political affiliation, race, etc., are really pushing it, I think.

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>December 2005 saw a fivefold increase in edits on pages in template
>space whose titles started with the characters "User_".  From about
>1200 in November, the number of such edits rose to 6100.
>
>Userboxes started innocously enough, first seeing widespread use with
>the Babel project, intended to inform users of one another's language
>skills.  But they haven't stayed that way.  From helping editors to
>locate one another by skill, they have evolved into a way for editors
>to group by conviction.  Last month one editor used userbox
>information to locate dozens of people who shared his religious
>persuasion in an overt attempt to destroy the consensual
>decision-making process of Wikipedia.  The religious userbox page
>(yes, such a page exists) lists some fifty userboxes intended to
>identify and group editors by expressed religion.  There is also a
>page for grouping according to political ideology.
>
>The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated. 
>They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
>equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page. 
>They must die.
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