On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Have you examined the figures? This is a massive growth. Political and belief-based userboxes have increased tenfold since the end of November. A database check tells me that of our 3500 or so userboxes, 1500 were created in December, and a further 250 have been created in the first three days of January alone. This is a serious push to reform Wikipedia as a network of users linked according to beliefs and preferences that can be accessed by a point-of-view pusher at the touch of a button.
The house is on fire.
The other possible explanation, of course, is that users have been creating them as userpage eye candy, and that the rate of growth is caused by (1) users seeing a political userbox on another user's page and deciding to make their own, and (2) the existence of the userbox WikiProject, which has undertaken a systematic creation of such boxes for every possible political belief.
At the very least, if (admittedly silly) things like {{user hell}} are intended for POV-pushing, I'm having trouble seeing the particular POV that users are being mobilized for here.
Kirill Lokshin