It seems difficult to follow one of these two
positions without
losing a
significant number of great contributors, so we need to come up
with some
sort of compromise solution. This is mainly just a collation of
various
suggestions, but I wondered what people think of it as a solution
1. The only userpage templates that are allowed in Template space
are those
of direct relevance to the project - e.g. babel, {{userpage}},
{{WikimediaNoLicensing}} etc.
Workable.
2. Userboxes cannot be 'transcluded' from user
subpages - the only
allowed
way to have a userbox is to copy the source code for it (this wouldn't
preclude Wikiproject Userboxes from having a list of boxen, all
they would
have to do is have a list of code rather than a list of {{user
userbox}}
template calls
Problematic. My user page actually transcludes lots of things from
subpages within my own user space. Perhaps disallow transcluding from
within other people's userspaces?
3. Userboxes are not allowed to use images or
categories. In fact all
'Wikipedians by...' categories (except Wikipedians by location and
other
categories whose existence is of evident utility to the project)
should be
deleted (can we add something to CSD to this effect, assuming there
isn't
already?)
I think the thing to do here is to restrict use of Wikipedia user
categories instead of banning categories and images from userboxes
outright. Userboxes have legitimate categorical use when it comes to
adminship, Babel, and Wikiproject membership.
2 and 3 are meant to stop 'vote stuffing' -
the other major gripe
people
have with boxen. Fair use images in userboxes are already not
allowed (since
they aren't fair use at all in boxen), and allowing public domain/FDL
images would give us precisely the same vote-stuffing problems that we
currently have with categories
But images aren't problematic for non-vote-stuffing userboxes, unless
you believe that all admins or all members of WikiProject Wikipedians
for Writing an Encyclopedia can be trusted to reliably vote the same
way :)
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch