Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 1/10/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/10/06, John Lee johnleemk@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).
Or [[User:Kelly Martin]]. I count one article edit in the last 500, though I might have missed a few.
Deleting userboxes is as productive toward the goal of creating an encyclopedia as creating them.
These people have assumed duties that aid the process of building an encyclopedia which do not (directly, at least) involve article editing. A new user (and pretty much everyone who isn't on the Board, Medcom, Arbcom, etc.) does not have such responsibilities. The only way they/we can help out will almost certainly involve article editing (stub sorting, AfD/speedy tagging, etc.). Even some niche tasks (like preparing spoken articles or uploading images) involve some article editing.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])