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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