[WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

[Tony Sidaway]

On 1/7/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:

[On taking away userboxes to see what happens]

>
> This is not only completely illogical, it underscores how out of touch
> admins can get. Intentionally taking away a source of joy from large
> numbers of users in a bid to see if they'll leave, or if they'll just
> accept your hegemony over them... thats pretty much the opposite of my
> recipe for success in a volunteer setting.
>

Well, you should understand that I'm only talking here about userboxes
that are potentially harmful to the project.  Boxes that are used to
attack people or groups (anti-Jewish and anti-Scientologist boxes have
appeared, and of course anything

There's also a problem where newer users see this as a freedom of
expression issue and wrongly believe that they have some kind of
US-constitution style protection over what they say on their user
pages.

I don't think it's overdramatizing to say that these people are in
general treating Wikipedia as some kind of hosting or social site.  If
that is what they're here for, they're not volunteers but freeloaders.

One way to find out is to take away their freebies and see how many
leave.  Another would be to look at the people who have voted in the
userbox controversy and see if significant numbers are in fact
contributing anything to the encyclopedia.  Many of them aren't, but
we don't have any quantification there.  If dealing with the issues
arising from userboxes strains our administration, we should let these
people go.