[WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 1/10/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Peter Mackay wrote:
>
> > <snip>
> >
> >If people are using Wikipedia to play rather than build an encyclopaedia,
> >then they should be encouraged in this primary objective, not castigated for
> >extraneous activies, because for every frivolous userbox, I dare say if I
> >went looking, I could find some other piece of useless guff on the user
> >pages of experienced editors. Let people play, if it does no harm and they
> >are participating in community activities, but also encourage them to be
> >more productive.
> >
> >
> The difference is experienced users tend to contribute to article space
> as well. Many userbox fanatics make minimal or no edits to articles. (Of
> course, most people with userboxes aren't fanatics; I have quite a few
> userboxes myself. But there are a few rogue bunch out there who seem
> more intent on userboxes than building an encyclopedia.)

Take a look at the edits of [[User:Jimbo Wales]] and [[User:Anthere]].
 There are productive things to do other than edit articles.  (This is
not at all to knock their contributions, it is instead to knock the
notion that article count means everything).