I suggest we regularly edit each others' user pages in an attempt to break this bizarre perception of ownership.
-- Tim Starling
:I agree. I actively encourage people editing my (my? It's wikimedia's isn't it?) user page by stating a feel free to edit this page note on it.
Theresa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales
I just added this text:
=You Can Edit This Page=
Really, you can.
This is my user page. I like to keep it a certain way. But, the thing is, I trust you. I trust that you'll add something here that makes me smile, that informs me, or that helps to inform others. If I have things in a certain format, I trust that you'll respect that format.
Actually, scratch that. Since this page is so simple and ugly, my ultimate dream is that some person who thinks it is fun will come along and make it look as perfect as Angela's user page.
Anyhow: see that link up there? 'edit this page'. Go for it, it's a wiki.
Jimbo Wales 16:28, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Do you people not understand how much disgusting (pornographic, name-calling) vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons. The Talk page is for editing. The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. Why do you feel the need to do that? What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
RickK
"KNOTT, T" tknott@qcl.org.uk wrote:
I suggest we regularly edit each others' user pages in an attempt to break this bizarre perception of ownership.
-- Tim Starling
:I agree. I actively encourage people editing my (my? It's wikimedia's isn't it?) user page by stating a feel free to edit this page note on it.
Theresa
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Rick wrote:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting (pornographic, name-calling) vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons. The Talk page is for editing. The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. Why do you feel the need to do that? What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
I think for some people, protecting the user page is a reasonable choice. You would likely fit into that category, because you've done so much work to fight vandals (which is very much appreciated, of course), that you're now a target from a lot of very dimwitted people.
But there's no reason to do it for everyone, and no reason for people to do it unless there's a major vandalism problem.
--Jimbo
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting (pornographic, name-calling) vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons. The Talk page is for editing. The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. Why do you feel the need to do that? What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
There is nothing wrong with fixing links and adding barnstars and such. But I do agree that overall editorial control over user pages should be with users. That said, I do not at all support the default protection of user pages. Many admins feel the need to protect their user pages; I don't, but I don't take issue with those that do.
Live and let live and all that happy crap people!
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Ok, what about giving non-admins the right to protect/unprotect their own user page?
-Rich Holton (user Rholton)
--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting
(pornographic, name-calling)
vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the
main reasons for blocking
anons. The Talk page is for editing. The User
page is for a person's
philosophy, who they are, what they are. Why do
you feel the need to do
that? What's wrong with just editing the Talk
page and leaving the User page
alone?
There is nothing wrong with fixing links and adding barnstars and such. But I do agree that overall editorial control over user pages should be with users. That said, I do not at all support the default protection of user pages. Many admins feel the need to protect their user pages; I don't, but I don't take issue with those that do.
Live and let live and all that happy crap people!
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com
I don't really want to duplicate the discussion that's already on the talk page, but you only have to look at the history of [[User:Sannse]] and [[User:Theresa knott]] to see that we know /exactly/ what sort of vandalism goes on. But I don't agree that this vandalism is a good reason to make pages generally uneditable by the majority of decent editors.
I acknowledge that there may be particular situations where protection is necessary, but this should be limited as much as possible - just as it is for articles.
--sannse
Rick wrote:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting (pornographic, name-calling) vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons. The Talk page is for editing. The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. Why do you feel the need to do that? What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
RickK
"KNOTT, T" tknott@qcl.org.uk wrote:
I suggest we regularly edit each others' user pages in an attempt to break this bizarre perception of ownership.
-- Tim Starling
:I agree. I actively encourage people editing my (my? It's wikimedia's isn't it?) user page by stating a feel free to edit this page note on it.
Theresa
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com/a _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Rick a écrit:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting (pornographic, name-calling)
vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons.
The Talk page is for editing.
The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are.
Why do you feel the need to do that?
What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
------
I have a slightly different perspective of what a user page is (but I agree your perpective is the most common one).
"The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. "
This is true. But to be most relevant, "who I am" or "what I am" is something best described by several points of view. Not only mine.
I can describe what I think I am. You can describe what you think I am, or what you think I think I am. I do not exist only through my perception, but through what all you perceive of me.
So, this is fine that you write on my user page, as long as it is only about me. The user page is not MY page, it is a page about ME :-)
On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 01:28:45 +0100 Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Rick a écrit:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting
(pornographic, name-calling)
vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons.
The Talk page is for editing.
The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are.
Why do you feel the need to do that?
What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
I have a slightly different perspective of what a user page is (but I agree your perpective is the most common one).
"The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. "
This is true. But to be most relevant, "who I am" or "what I am" is something best described by several points of view. Not only mine.
I can describe what I think I am. You can describe what you think I am, or what you think I think I am. I do not exist only through my perception, but through what all you perceive of me.
So, this is fine that you write on my user page, as long as it is only about me. The user page is not MY page, it is a page about ME :-) sorry about taking so long to answer your mail but work
committments have kept me away from my pc.i partially agree with what you have to say.what i cannot understand is all the aggravation and personal attacks over this issue.can`t we all just settle this matter amicably.i do not think a user page should be used to attack him or her but rather for constructive criticism.what wikipedians are saying to each other is not constructive but rather destructive.
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Rick wrote:
Do you people not understand how much disgusting (pornographic, name-calling) vandalism goes on on User pages? It's one of the main reasons for blocking anons. The Talk page is for editing. The User page is for a person's philosophy, who they are, what they are. Why do you feel the need to do that? What's wrong with just editing the Talk page and leaving the User page alone?
I admit I was being flippant, there's certainly a good argument in favour of protecting user pages. There's certain cases where editing someone else's user page would be desirable, but it's rarely done anyway for philosophical reasons. Two French users, Anthere and Hashar, were kind enough to respond to my post by editing my user page, and I responded in kind by correcting mistakes in their English on their en user pages. Head did the same for me once, correcting my machine-translated German at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Tim_Starling . These actions could only be considered to be a good thing.
However, it's perfectly clear that the vast bulk of user page edits, say 99%, are malicious. That's partly because good users don't fix mistakes on other peoples' user pages out of courtesy, but vandals wishing to make a personal attack are not so inhibited.
So maybe 90% of edits to articles are made in good faith, but only 1% of edits of other peoples' user pages. There's an argument to be had for reducing that 1% of good edits by putting up barriers, in exchange for removing the need to revert the other 99%.
Despite what I said in my hasty first post, I'm actually undecided.
-- Tim Starling
I would favour giving every user a preferences ''option'' where they can choose whether or not to protect their own user page.
This in part for the reasons Tim gave (below). Also, views about whether or not others should be allowed to edit someone's own user page tend to differ, so introducing such an option respects and reflects such differing views. I don't think non-abusive users who feel that their user page is "for them to control" should be ''forced'' to keep it open for community editing. Finally, as was observed previously, user page vandalism is a bigger problem with some users (and less with others), so leaving that one up to the individual user just makes sense.
However: * Admins should be able to override the protection and "police" cases where users might be abusing their own user page -- eg. using it as a non-Wikipedia related home page, posting slurs or legal threats or other content that would never be tolerated by the community. (That's because Wikipedia is not a home page provider. User pages are pages ''about'' the individual Wikipedian and not for posting absolutely anything which that natural person pleases.) * Users should NEVER be allowed to protect their Talk page.
a still ailing -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On 5 Nov 2004, at 17:24, Tim Starling wrote:
...there's certainly a good argument in favour of protecting user pages. There's certain cases where editing someone else's user page would be desirable, but it's rarely done anyway for philosophical reasons. Two French users, Anthere and Hashar, were kind enough to respond to my post by editing my user page, and I responded in kind by correcting mistakes in their English on their en user pages. Head did the same for me once, correcting my machine-translated German at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Tim_Starling . These actions could only be considered to be a good thing.
However, it's perfectly clear that the vast bulk of user page edits, say 99%, are malicious. That's partly because good users don't fix mistakes on other peoples' user pages out of courtesy, but vandals wishing to make a personal attack are not so inhibited.
So maybe 90% of edits to articles are made in good faith, but only 1% of edits of other peoples' user pages. There's an argument to be had for reducing that 1% of good edits by putting up barriers, in exchange for removing the need to revert the other 99%.
Despite what I said in my hasty first post, I'm actually undecided.
-- Tim Starling
Jens Ropers wrote:
I would favour giving every user a preferences ''option'' where they can choose whether or not to protect their own user page.
This in part for the reasons Tim gave (below). Also, views about whether or not others should be allowed to edit someone's own user page tend to differ, so introducing such an option respects and reflects such differing views. I don't think non-abusive users who feel that their user page is "for them to control" should be ''forced'' to keep it open for community editing.
That's arguable...
Finally, as was observed previously, user page vandalism is a bigger problem with some users (and less with others), so leaving that one up to the individual user just makes sense.
I agree with that one though.
- Users should NEVER be allowed to protect their Talk page.
This brings up an interesting point. If we protect user pages, we can expect vandals to vandalise talk pages instead. That's a lesser evil, to be sure. However I can see a possible partial technical solution. Users could enable a moderation queue for their user page. When an anonymous user makes a change, the software uses a cookie match to display the unmoderated page to them after they hit save, but to everyone else, the last approved version is displayed.
Logged-in users get the advantage of a message telling them that their edit is being held for moderation.
Just a techno-fantasy, I'm not actually planning on coding this.
a still ailing -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On 5 Nov 2004, at 17:24, Tim Starling wrote:
<snip>
ARRGGHH TOP-POST KILL KILL
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote
If we protect user pages, we can expect vandals to vandalise talk pages instead.
Right. The graffiti, if that is what they are, migrate. Of course if they are nasty personal attacks and repeated, user pages can rightly be protected, and sanctions applied. Proposal: do _not_ make user pages uneditable as default. This is the 'soft security' approach, which generally has served wikis well: don't try to block out all the user problems, because you won't.
Charles
Sorry for asking what are possibly some horrendously daft questions, but I'm seeing some "top-post aversion" reference for the second or third time now. Does "top posting" simply refer to having the previous emails below the more recent post (as with this email)? Is a majority of list posters opposed to that here? (Is there a reason/rationale for the strong aversion?) Or do the majority actually prefer "top-posting"?
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On 5 Nov 2004, at 14:32, Tim Starling wrote:
<snip>
ARRGGHH TOP-POST KILL KILL
-- Tim Starling
On 5 Nov 2004, at 14:32, Tim Starling wrote:
ARRGGHH TOP-POST KILL KILL
On 5 Nov 2004, at 16:49, Charles Matthews wrote:
Jens Roper wrote
^^-- Jens Roper'''s''' wonders how people can pay more attention to non-issues such as "top-posting" than to getting each others' names right. ;o)
Charles Matthews wrote:
See [[top-posting]] on Wiki-en, [[de:TOFU]].
Ah. It appears that this is yet another proxy fight for the old "M$ vs. Open Source software" war. For the record: I use Mac OS X Mail. I don't use Microsoft email clients. Thank you. Please go easy on the death threats now.
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
Jens Ropers wrote:
Charles Matthews wrote:
See [[top-posting]] on Wiki-en, [[de:TOFU]].
Ah. It appears that this is yet another proxy fight for the old "M$ vs. Open Source software" war.
Has nothing to do with Microsoft or open source except in so much as Microsoft is guilt of poor design. I was first informed of how annoying top-posting was years before I'd even heard of open source and by someone who was, if anything, pro-Microsoft.
That's the MOST annoying thing?! Astounding. Mark
Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote: Jens Ropers wrote:
Is a majority of list posters opposed to that here? (Is there a reason/rationale for the strong aversion?)
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Jens Ropers wrote:
- Admins should be able to override the protection and "police" cases
where users might be abusing their own user page -- eg. using it as a non-Wikipedia related home page, posting slurs or legal threats or other content that would never be tolerated by the community. (That's because Wikipedia is not a home page provider. User pages are pages ''about'' the individual Wikipedian and not for posting absolutely anything which that natural person pleases.)
A user should have the widest possible latitude in what he does on his own user page. It doesn't bother me if a person uses that page to engage in self-promotion or in what appears to be a home page. It's only one page. Determining whether he has done so is completely subjective, and for a single page we don't need to get into that kind of argument. Even if a person engages in slurs and legal threats he says more about himself than anyone else. Limiting someone's right to free speech there should be the extreme exception there.
- Users should NEVER be allowed to protect their Talk page.
There are always exceptions, such as when one is beset by a persistent vandal attacker. In those circumstances he may want to protect for a few days until things settle down.
Ec