[WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A radical proposal

[Steve Bennett]

G'day Mark (and commiserations for living in Canberra :))),

I wasn't denying that they're useful. But what's the worst possible
outcome if they weren't there? In your case, how would you form
impressions of others? I suspect that user contributions and talk page
are pretty informative...

Steve


On 2/17/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Steve,
>
> >   What is the worst possible thing that could happen if we removed
> > userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine"
> > user pages.
>
> I find userpages very useful.  They often give me an idea of how a user
> approaches Wikipedia, and through that what they'll probably be like to
> interact with: do they take pride in their contributions (brag lists,
> etc.), are they good with fiddling with wikicode (pretty userpages), are
> they generally practical and edit-oriented (impersonal userpage, with a
> list of reminders, useful templates, etc.), are they kooks (userpage
> full of ravings, foul-mouthed comments about The Beatles and Queen
> Brenda, etc.), are they confident users (a userpage that says "I'm new
> here and don't know my way around", probably means "no"), are they silly
> sausages (a userpage with hundreds of userboxen, many of which aren't
> even applicable but look pretty, what with all those fair use images),
> where are they from and how provincial are they ... you get the idea.
>
> I could probably live with losing my own userpage.  It's not really
> doing all /that/ much that's useful.  However, I'd like to hang on to
> the userpages of others ...