[WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A radical proposal

[Tony Sidaway]

On 2/18/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> If I wasn't such a slow editor, and if I knew how to run a bot, I'd be
> likely to create a huge massive stir by going through every single
> template in the problematic categories and edit every single user page
> to subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go.
>
> Please no one else do this... yet. :)
>
>



Er, it didn't happen in any organised way, but in fact, that is
precisely what has been happening.

Basically a bunch of admins went bananas and started deleting stuff
they thought was bad, and at the same time another guy started quietly
retrieving stuff and substing on other people's user pages using some
kind of semi-automatic browser tool.

And you know what?  The users hate the admins but they love the guy
who does the substing.  As long as they get their pretty pastel boxes
back, the reasonable ones happy, and the more reasonable admins are
happy.

I think we're headed for consensus!