On 1/4/06, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 4, 2006, at 10:52 PM, Geoff Burling wrote:
- they misuse wikipedia's Fair Use guidelines
- they enable zealots with similar POVs to find each other
- they cause divisiveness
- they are an unnecessary burden on the servers
- there are Wikipedians who spend more time on Userboxes than on
contributing to the rest of Wikipedia
You're missing a key one - the userbox project has become a poisonous pit that explicitly targets those who do not like userboxes, and it is actively fostering a crusade mentality. This is a systemic problem, not one of specific boxes. In short, the project itself needs to go.
Oh please. I think userboxes are silly but this argument might be even sillier. A "crusade mentality" cannot survive without an enemy. If people weren't trying to delete the userboxes then there wouldn't be a crusade. Using the fact of objection to deletion as a reason for deletion is ludicrious.
If people are not being civil, we have WP:CIVIL. Userboxes don't make uncivil comments, users do. And deleting their little boxes without a good reason isn't going to make that any better.
FF