[WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A rational proposal

[Philip Welch]

Stop worrying about userboxes and write an encyclopedia already. If  
and when userboxes interfere with encyclopedia-writing activities,  
react in an appropriately minimalist fashion and proceed with the  
encyclopedia-writing.

Quite frankly, the userbox fans are *not* the people disrupting  
Wikipedia with an unhealthy fixation with userboxes. This isn't to  
say that they don't *have* an unhealthy userbox fixation, but rather,  
that they engage in that fixation in a way that doesn't really  
prevent the rest of us from writing an encyclopedia.

The people disrupting Wikipedia—that would be us, writing dozens of  
messages to this listserv about them. Aren't we the people who  
actually care about writing an encyclopedia? Then why don't we do  
that, instead of wasting our time compiling statistics about  
userboxes, trying to delete them, and debating the right way to do that?

You want to end the userbox war peacefully without screwing up the  
community? Repeat after me: "It's not worth it, and I should go  
mediate an NPOV dispute or do some research and write one of our  
requested articles, or bring an article to FA status instead of  
jousting with userbox-happy newbies."

And then actually do it.

-- 
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch