There are plenty of people who think that Wikipedia should never have any expressions of political opinions etc., and that userboxes should never be allowed under any circumstances. There are others that think that all userboxes should be allowed.
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
1. The only userpage templates that are allowed in Template space are those of direct relevance to the project - e.g. babel, {{userpage}}, {{WikimediaNoLicensing}} etc. 2. 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 3. 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?)
1 is fairly obvious - there is concern that having userboxes in the Template space could give the impression that they are part of Wikipedia proper.
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
This would solve most of the complaints people have with userboxes (apart from the people think that WP:NPOV applies to userpages, which is objectively wrong) without stopping people from disclosing their particular biases.
Incidentally, I think this should be accompanied by using a bot to replace all instances of userboxes with the code (a bot or AWB could do this) so that people don't end up with their userpage covered in redlinks
Cynical
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 :)
I certainly don't want suggestion 3 to be done. Wikipedians by field of interest and any category that shows specific Wikipedian knowledge and expertise have a use in the project and would be deleted with this suggestion just because a few people have been warring.
And what is the use in banning images on userboxes when they are to be hardcoded anyway?
How about we get around the table and decide on what type of user categorization and boxes would be acceptable?
Acceptable: 1) Admin status 2) WikiProject membership 3) Skills (fields of interest) 4) Languages 5) System information (IE, Firefox, Windows, Linux, etc.)
Anything I missed?
Unacceptable: ???
On 2/22/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
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 :)
-- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Honestly, does anyone actually use these userboxes to find experts? This is a genuine question: I have never done so. Does anyone regularly use userbox categories or "what links here" on userbox templates to locate people who are experts in certain fields to help with a project?
Steve
On 2/22/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I certainly don't want suggestion 3 to be done. Wikipedians by field of interest and any category that shows specific Wikipedian knowledge and expertise have a use in the project and would be deleted with this suggestion just because a few people have been warring.
And what is the use in banning images on userboxes when they are to be hardcoded anyway?
How about we get around the table and decide on what type of user categorization and boxes would be acceptable?
Acceptable:
- Admin status
- WikiProject membership
- Skills (fields of interest)
- Languages
- System information (IE, Firefox, Windows, Linux, etc.)
Anything I missed?
Unacceptable: ???
On 2/22/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
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 :)
-- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Honestly, does anyone actually use these userboxes to find experts? This is a genuine question: I have never done so. Does anyone regularly use userbox categories or "what links here" on userbox templates to locate people who are experts in certain fields to help with a project?
I usually look for a WikiProject.
Do you find members in that wikiproject by userboxes on their page, or by them signing up on the wikiproject page itself?
Steve
On 2/22/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
Honestly, does anyone actually use these userboxes to find experts? This is a genuine question: I have never done so. Does anyone regularly use userbox categories or "what links here" on userbox templates to locate people who are experts in certain fields to help with a project?
I usually look for a WikiProject.
-- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Feb 22, 2006, at 2:47 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
Do you find members in that wikiproject by userboxes on their page, or by them signing up on the wikiproject page itself?
The WikiProject page, usually.
I have a very hard time using them for this purpose. Even the Babel ones. I was looking for a good German speaker not too long ago. The problem is, I needed someone who was 1. fluent in German, 2. fluent in English, 3. had a good chance of being online soon.
The Babel boxes were really no help in this -- unless I'm totally out of the loop, I don't know of any way to do a JOIN type query in this (i.e. both native German and English speakers), and both of those categories individually have far too many people to look them over in any sort of systematic way. And of course none of that really gets at the question of who has recently edited. In the end I just gave up on trying to find someone (eventually someone the text I wanted translated, which worked just as well, but of course the fact that it was a relatively common language on En helped with that).
Sure -- there are other solutions. I could go to the Village Pump or the De wiki Village Pump or a number of other places. And I'm not saying that I find Babel useless -- they are very helpful as *descriptive* tags. But I couldn't figure out a good way to actively *find* someone with them, as the level of information they give me (long lists of users associated with a single language) is useless for this.
FF
On 2/22/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Honestly, does anyone actually use these userboxes to find experts? This is a genuine question: I have never done so. Does anyone regularly use userbox categories or "what links here" on userbox templates to locate people who are experts in certain fields to help with a project?
Steve
On 2/22/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I certainly don't want suggestion 3 to be done. Wikipedians by field of interest and any category that shows specific Wikipedian knowledge and expertise have a use in the project and would be deleted with this suggestion just because a few people have been warring.
And what is the use in banning images on userboxes when they are to be hardcoded anyway?
How about we get around the table and decide on what type of user categorization and boxes would be acceptable?
Acceptable:
- Admin status
- WikiProject membership
- Skills (fields of interest)
- Languages
- System information (IE, Firefox, Windows, Linux, etc.)
Anything I missed?
Unacceptable: ???
On 2/22/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
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 :)
-- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Fastfission wrote:
The Babel boxes were really no help in this -- unless I'm totally out of the loop, I don't know of any way to do a JOIN type query in this (i.e. both native German and English speakers), and both of those categories individually have far too many people to look them over in any sort of systematic way. And of course none of that really gets at the question of who has recently edited. In the end I just gave up on trying to find someone (eventually someone the text I wanted translated, which worked just as well, but of course the fact that it was a relatively common language on En helped with that).
Incidentally, a few weeks ago, Pietras1988 at the Polish Wikipedia http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Pietras1988 contacted me (most likely via a Babelbox), asking me to translate a little Polish town called Kurów into Vietnamese. By the looks of the interwiki links on that article now, it looks like Pietras1988 contacted quite a few people. That town now has the distinction of being described in Gothic and Aramaic, of all languages.
On 2/23/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I have a very hard time using them for this purpose. Even the Babel ones. I was looking for a good German speaker not too long ago. The problem is, I needed someone who was 1. fluent in German, 2. fluent in English, 3. had a good chance of being online soon.
The Babel boxes were really no help in this -- unless I'm totally out of the loop, I don't know of any way to do a JOIN type query in this
Wouldn't it be great if we had tags, rather than categories, and could do queries on multiple tags at once?
Can someone come up with a decent proposal about this? Apparently lots of other sites have them...
Having two tags "+living" "+person" makes much more sense than a "Category:Living people". And similarly for having "+Cuban" "+Pole vaulter" rather than "Category:Cuban pole vaulters" (especially if the person is also Chinese, or whatever).
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
Honestly, does anyone actually use these userboxes to find experts? This is a genuine question: I have never done so. Does anyone regularly use userbox categories or "what links here" on userbox templates to locate people who are experts in certain fields to help with a project?
I've used Babel templates on my interlanguage travels to find editors who can help me with difficult tasks...
On Feb 22, 2006, at 1:37 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
I certainly don't want suggestion 3 to be done. Wikipedians by field of interest and any category that shows specific Wikipedian knowledge and expertise have a use in the project and would be deleted with this suggestion just because a few people have been warring.
No. They would not. Wikipedians by field of interest could (and should) be merged into the WikiProjects list - I've continued to wonder what benefit it is to know that a wikipedian is a firefox user *if they are not interested in web brower articles on wikipedia*. What does that get us in terms of writing the encyclopedia?
And what is the use in banning images on userboxes when they are to be hardcoded anyway?
To prevent whatlinkshere from being a quick way to generate a list of people identifying with that statement. I think this is a little over the top, but thats the reason.
How about we get around the table and decide on what type of user categorization and boxes would be acceptable?
I think merely basing it on - it has to be useful to writing an encyclopedia, i.e. it needs a page in the Wikipedia namespace, is probably sufficient.
See the proposed policy.
Jesse Weinstein
On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:46 PM, Jesse W wrote:
No. They would not. Wikipedians by field of interest could (and should) be merged into the WikiProjects list - I've continued to wonder what benefit it is to know that a wikipedian is a firefox user *if they are not interested in web brower articles on wikipedia*. What does that get us in terms of writing the encyclopedia?
They see how it renders in Firefox?
Philip Welch wrote:
On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:46 PM, Jesse W wrote:
No. They would not. Wikipedians by field of interest could (and should) be merged into the WikiProjects list - I've continued to wonder what benefit it is to know that a wikipedian is a firefox user *if they are not interested in web brower articles on wikipedia*. What does that get us in terms of writing the encyclopedia?
They see how it renders in Firefox?
And they see how certain bits of Javascript and CSS (which can be used to help write the encyclopedia) work in Firefox.
On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:44 PM, Philip Welch wrote:
On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:46 PM, Jesse W wrote:
No. They would not. Wikipedians by field of interest could (and should) be merged into the WikiProjects list - I've continued to wonder what benefit it is to know that a wikipedian is a firefox user *if they are not interested in web brower articles on wikipedia*. What does that get us in terms of writing the encyclopedia?
They see how it renders in Firefox?
But wouldn't that be better handled by asking someone involved with the Usability WikiProject? </semi-serious>
Jesse Weinstein