[WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

[SCZenz]

Userboxes aren't good for much, but they can be managed so they don't hurt
the servers much either, I suspect.  Likewise we can get rid of
inappropriate "fair use" images.  And unless we're gonna delete user
categories too, we can't stop people from identifying themselves publicly by
their POV's.  So I don't think getting rid of userboxes makes things better.

Meanwhile, many users *like* userboxes, silly though they may be.  It keeps
them happy, which means they stay and make more productive edits.
Conversely, if we tell all those users their views don't count and they
should stuff it, we will lose editors.  (I've already seen some leaving over
the current mess.)

The Wikipedia community exists to write the encyclopedia, no other reason;
but if we alienate a large section of the community, the encyclopedia won't
be written nearly as well.

SCZenz


On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> 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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