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.) I agree that this is probably a symptom of a larger problem, though - people forgetting we're here to build an encyclopedia, not play. Playing is fine, as long as you build the encyclopedia while you're at it. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia first and a community second.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])