[WikiEN-l] Time to finish this userbox war once and for all

[Steve Bennett]

Honestly, does anyone actually use these userboxes to find experts?
This is a genuine question: I have never done so. Does anyone
regularly use userbox categories or "what links here" on userbox
templates to locate people who are experts in certain fields to help
with a project?

Steve

On 2/22/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I certainly don't want suggestion 3 to be done. Wikipedians by field of
> interest and any category that shows specific Wikipedian knowledge and
> expertise have a use in the project and would be deleted with this
> suggestion just because a few people have been warring.
>
> And what is the use in banning images on userboxes when they are to be
> hardcoded anyway?
>
> How about we get around the table and decide on what type of user
> categorization and boxes would be acceptable?
>
> Acceptable:
> 1) Admin status
> 2) WikiProject membership
> 3) Skills (fields of interest)
> 4) Languages
> 5) System information (IE, Firefox, Windows, Linux, etc.)
>
> Anything I missed?
>
> Unacceptable:
> ???
>
>
> On 2/22/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >
> > > 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
> >
> >
> >
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