I find Mark Gallegher's response to this suggestion very appropriate. This is how I relate to user pages. I see an edit by an unfamiliar name. I wonder, "What is this user about?" I go to their user page and if they have an expressive page I can get a quick grasp of who we are dealing with. They same thing can be done by looking at a few dozen edits, but either a well thought out or a nutty user page usually tells all.
User pages are functional and serve the purpose of the project.
Fred
On Feb 17, 2006, at 12:05 PM, Mark Gallagher 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 ...
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
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