On 1/4/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Carbonite carbonite.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I think it's possible to reach a compromise where users can keep their userboxes (even the silly ones) while eliminating (or at least greatly reducing) the potential for creating POV factions. I wanted to get some feedback here before tossing it out to the wolves.
The core of my proposal is that anything that doesn't help to create the encyclopedia shouldn't exist as a userbox template. Instead, it should exist as code which users would be free to paste onto their user pages. Thus, to anyone viewing a user's page, the userboxes would look exactly as they do now, but the harmful side-effects (easy identification of POV factions, increased server load, etc..) would mostly be eliminated.
Userboxes that do help in building the encyclopedia would be allowed to remain as templates. This would include the Babel templates or anything that concerns a user's skills or expertise.
The "approved" userbox template would be listed in central location and any user could add them to their user pages. There would have to be consensus to approve any new templates.
The "unapproved" userboxes would also be listed a central location, but they could be added to this repository by anyone. They would exist only as code and an example of what the userbox looks like. This code would have to be free of fair-use images and must not include any categories. Any "unapproved" userboxes that existed as templates could be speedily deleted.
With this setup, a userbox stating "This user is a Democrat" would be no different that a sentence on their user page stating that they're a Democrat. The user wouldn't be included in a category and couldn't be identified through Whatlinkshere. There also wouldn't be any concerns about censorship or stifling of free speech.
I'm sure this proposal could use some development, but it's a start. Thoughts?
If you really wanted to be thorough, you'd need two further qualifications:
- No images in userboxes, since the usage list for, say, a donkey
used in the Democrat userbox would show all the user-page inclusions of the code. 2. Similarly, no links to articles in userboxes. If, say, the code for the Democrat userbox contained [[U.S. Democratic Party]], a determined individual could examine Whatlinkshere for that article to identify all users with the code. There would be some false positives, obviously, from unrelated users having the link on their userpage; but not so many that this would be infeasible.
The other option, obviously, is to avoid relying on technological solutions to an essentially social problem ;-)
You're certainly correct on those points, but this proposal would go a long way towards addressing the current problems with userboxes. I think this issue needs to be solved by a combination of technical solutions (making the userboxes simply a statement than a membership in a faction) and social solutions (any suggestions?).
Carbonite