[WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

Wed Jan 4 05:31:56 UTC 2006

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 1/4/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > When the house is on fire, you don't hold a discussion.  It's been
> > > suggested elsewhere that the usera engaged in this fad are not regular
> > > editors.   They can go back to wherever they came from.
> >
> >
> > The house isn't on fire.
>
> Have you examined the figures?   This is a massive growth.  Political
> and belief-based userboxes have increased tenfold since the end of
> November.  A database check tells me that of our 3500 or so userboxes,
> 1500 were created in December, and a further 250 have been created in
> the first three days of January alone.  This is a serious push to
> reform Wikipedia as a network of users linked according to beliefs and
> preferences that can be accessed by a point-of-view pusher at the
> touch of a button.
>
> The house is on fire.

Userboxes destroy Wikipedia! Film/jpeg/mpeg4/ogg files at 11.

(Someone had to say it.)

Geoff