On 1/8/06, Ben Emmel bratsche1@gmail.com wrote:
This is the kind of policy or statement that we need. Anything that wastes time and valuable server resources (such as "This user considers himself to be an expert player of Bridge") can be canned.
I personally suspect that more time (of those who actually contribute to the encyclopedia) is being wasted by arguing over these things. Userboxes such as this are largely pointless, but IMO non-harmful.
I think by and large userboxes are silly, and a self-written self-description on a user's page is much more interesting and useful, but I think there is nothing so objectionable about non-factionalizing userboxes that requires so draconian a policy, or its enforcement.
Substing userboxes is probably a good idea, though, to reduce potential server load if commonly used userboxes are updated.
-Matt