On 5/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/12/06, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote:
What on Earth is supposed to be
harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial
topics?
As far as I can see, CSD T1 only prohibits me from creating
[[Template:User thinks religion is an irrational construction of the
mind]], not from putting the same information on my user page without
a template (inside a colored box or without one). It seems more like a
structural measure than a content-related policy. From that point of
view, I find it hard to get very excited about this change. We didn't
even have templates until Tim added the feature to MediaWiki.
Its not even the content that they are really pushing against, it is
the simple votestacking issue. Its not like people would not otherwise
link to their controversial topic and people could use what links here
from the article page anyway. Thats just the second most easy method
of vote-stacking, there have to be others.
Templates are meant for the encyclopedia and its
processes. When you
allow highly individual/personal content in the template space, you
effectively encourage userpage policy creeping into the template
namespace, i.e. claims of content ownership and lack of NPOV. As for
the "vote-stacking" and grouping, that issue has two sides, a good one
and a bad one, but I tend to agree that on highly divisive issues, the
disadvantages tend to prevail.
Erik
The purposes of templates in my view are not just for the
encyclopedia. I haven't seen a decree stating that, and userboxes have
been accepted as a way of life. How else would you describe the
existence of DRVU, if they hadn't been accepted outright in concept? I
think that the possibly keeping categories out of userboxes is the
furthest that I would go to reduce divisive and inflammatory factors.
For example, if something goes back for a second "vote", there are
many people who are prepared to take the last vote and contact
everyone who voted the same as them in order to tell them about the
second vote, how exactly do you keep that from happening by taking
away userboxes?
Peter