[WikiEN-l] More editing of user pages, please (was Arbcom has completely lost its mind)

[Sherool]

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:21:29 +0100, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On 2/9/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It makes people happy for a reason. It gives them their own little  
>> corner on
>> the site which is "theirs". If anyone was able to edit my userspace, it
>> would no doubt kill the formatting I like so much, and who is to say the
>> links I need to work effectively will remain?
>> If editing of userpages wasn't discouraged, who says we wouldn't get  
>> more
>> disputes (which are now confined to other  pages). If there's things  
>> clearly
>> unacceptable for userpages like rants, attacks, and certain disruptive
>> things, we should simply state those outright and take action against  
>> those
>> who break those rules.
>
> By the same token, we should feel free to edit user pages when they
> cross certain boundaries. Preferably clearly defined ones.
<snip>

If you leave a verbose edit summary and explain the edit on theyr talk  
page you can usualy get away with editing other people's pages if you have  
a good reason (though there are still some knee jerk reverts), but there  
are a few users who consider *any* edit (beyond simple typo fixing) of  
theyr userpage to be vandalism regardles, and they can be extremely vocal  
about it.

Things like removing fair use images for example should be  
uncontroversial, at least if explained properly (though after some  
complains I have none the less started asking people to remove them  
themselves instead, and give them a few days before I intervene). When it  
comes to removing offensive material things are more "tricky", users who  
put such things on theyr userpage tend to be attention seeking and/or  
"troublemakers" in the first place, so when "the man" comes alog and mess  
with theyr page they are far more likely to declare all our war over it.

-- 
[[User:Sherool]]