[WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

Thu Jan 5 03:52:43 UTC 2006

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Nathan Russell wrote:
>
> If users are engaging in personal attacks, racism, homophobia, or what
> have you in userboxes, talk pages, wikipedia_talk pages, or anywhere
> else on WP, that should be dealt with in terms of WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL,
> and their sister policies.  Not in terms of userboxes being a bad
> thing, but in terms of some userboxes (and some users' use of
> userboxes) being disruptive to the community and being individually
> taken to TFD as such.
>
> If I make a user subpage [[User:Pakaran/Why Someuser is a big fat
> bastard]], then that does not mean that user subpages are bad.  It
> means that I made a bad use of that user subpage, and *I* should be
> dealt with (and the page should probably be deleted, etc).

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