On 6/5/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Playing the devil's advocate a bit...
Why do User pages and space even exist, then?
Is that a serious question?
Yes, of course.
They exist so that editors can write
about personal matters related to their work on the encyclopedia.
Here we come to what's obviously an unresolved dynamic tension in WP:USER. -- "Anything that is compatible with the Wikipedia project. It's a mistake to think of it as a homepage: Wikipedia is not a free host, blog, or webspace provider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT. Instead, think of it as a way of organizing the work that you are doing on the articles in Wikipedia, and also a way of helping other editors to understand with whom they're working."
"Some people add a little information about themselves as well, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, their real name, their location, information about your areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. If you are concerned with privacy, you may not want to emulate this."
[...]
"You might want to add quotes that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite Wikipedia articles or images (free licensed only, see the #What can I not have on my user page?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:USER#What_can_I_not_have_on_my_user_page.3Fsection below), or something like that. Also, someone may choose to award you a barnstar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Barnstar.png. In the event that your editing privileges on Wikipedia are revoked, a notice of this may be placed on your user page." --
To summarize, "This is for Wikipedia work, not personal stuff... but some personal stuff is OK." Exactly the sort of ambiguity which lets everyone get in maximum amounts of trouble by misinterpreting it in their favor.
You (Tony) emphasize the WP work aspect. Other people take the other information aspects at its word... and some go overboard.