It seems difficult to follow one of these two positions without losing a significant number of great contributors, so we need to come up with some sort of compromise solution. This is mainly just a collation of various suggestions, but I wondered what people think of it as a solution
- The only userpage templates that are allowed in Template space
are those of direct relevance to the project - e.g. babel, {{userpage}}, {{WikimediaNoLicensing}} etc.
Workable.
- Userboxes cannot be 'transcluded' from user subpages - the only
allowed way to have a userbox is to copy the source code for it (this wouldn't preclude Wikiproject Userboxes from having a list of boxen, all they would have to do is have a list of code rather than a list of {{user userbox}} template calls
Problematic. My user page actually transcludes lots of things from subpages within my own user space. Perhaps disallow transcluding from within other people's userspaces?
- Userboxes are not allowed to use images or categories. In fact all
'Wikipedians by...' categories (except Wikipedians by location and other categories whose existence is of evident utility to the project) should be deleted (can we add something to CSD to this effect, assuming there isn't already?)
I think the thing to do here is to restrict use of Wikipedia user categories instead of banning categories and images from userboxes outright. Userboxes have legitimate categorical use when it comes to adminship, Babel, and Wikiproject membership.
2 and 3 are meant to stop 'vote stuffing' - the other major gripe people have with boxen. Fair use images in userboxes are already not allowed (since they aren't fair use at all in boxen), and allowing public domain/FDL images would give us precisely the same vote-stuffing problems that we currently have with categories
But images aren't problematic for non-vote-stuffing userboxes, unless you believe that all admins or all members of WikiProject Wikipedians for Writing an Encyclopedia can be trusted to reliably vote the same way :)