No one ever answered this, it seems!
I can understand (sympathize with) Jimbo's proposal (expressed in a few different places) that we just completely get rid of personal pages, but I think they do a lot more good than harm. As Stephen says, they allow people to get acquainted, to exchange personal messages, to brag, and to do other stuff that makes Wikipedia an "online community."
As far as I'm concerned, the personal pages will all be moved from the main article space to a "user:" or "u:" namespace, which will be a good thing. It'll make counting articles more accurate and give us a clearer distinction between the creators and the subjects of the creation. :-) Also, for recordkeeping, it's nice to have a record of who has written what (on the [[Recent Changes]] page) and this necessitates fully integrated user namespace.
It's a separate question whether we'll stick with the present Metawikipedia or move all that stuff to a "discussion:" (or whatever) namespace, with its own [[Recent Changes]] page. I wouldn't want to move it if it didn't have its own [[Recent Changes]] page.
But...we don't have to decide any of this right away. Magnus has to get through exams ;-), apparently, and we could stand doing some more testing of his software, before making the switch to the new software.
Larry
On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
I'm not sure what the status is on personal Wikipedian pages. I know that we're moving personal essays to meta.wikipedia.com, but what about the pages themselves? Are we keeping them? If so, where will they be located?
Personally, I would like to see them stay on Wikipedia itself, in the user: namespace. However, I think the pages should only be used to provide an introduction, to exchange messages, and for encyclopedia writing purposes (to do lists, contribution lists, etc). Personal essays and the like should go on MetaWikipedia. Anything not related to Wikipedia would go elsewhere, like a personal Geocities page.
-- Stephen Gilbert [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l