G'day Mark (and commiserations for living in Canberra :))),
I wasn't denying that they're useful. But what's the worst possible
outcome if they weren't there? In your case, how would you form
impressions of others? I suspect that user contributions and talk page
are pretty informative...
Steve
On 2/17/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
G'day Steve,
What is the worst possible thing that could
happen if we removed
userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine"
user pages.
I find userpages very useful. They often give me an idea of how a user
approaches Wikipedia, and through that what they'll probably be like to
interact with: do they take pride in their contributions (brag lists,
etc.), are they good with fiddling with wikicode (pretty userpages), are
they generally practical and edit-oriented (impersonal userpage, with a
list of reminders, useful templates, etc.), are they kooks (userpage
full of ravings, foul-mouthed comments about The Beatles and Queen
Brenda, etc.), are they confident users (a userpage that says "I'm new
here and don't know my way around", probably means "no"), are they
silly
sausages (a userpage with hundreds of userboxen, many of which aren't
even applicable but look pretty, what with all those fair use images),
where are they from and how provincial are they ... you get the idea.
I could probably live with losing my own userpage. It's not really
doing all /that/ much that's useful. However, I'd like to hang on to
the userpages of others ...