[WikiEN-l] Userbox compromise proposal (Was: Proposal on userbox disagreement)

[Kirill Lokshin]

On 1/4/06, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it's possible to reach a compromise where users can keep their
> userboxes (even the silly ones) while eliminating (or at least greatly
> reducing) the potential for creating POV factions. I wanted to get
> some feedback here before tossing it out to the wolves.
>
> The core of my proposal is that anything that doesn't help to create
> the encyclopedia shouldn't exist as a userbox template. Instead, it
> should exist as code which users would be free to paste onto their
> user pages. Thus, to anyone viewing a user's page, the userboxes would
> look exactly as they do now, but the harmful side-effects (easy
> identification of POV factions, increased server load, etc..) would
> mostly be eliminated.
>
> Userboxes that do help in building the encyclopedia would be allowed
> to remain as templates. This would include the Babel templates or
> anything that concerns a user's skills or expertise.
>
> The "approved" userbox template would be listed in central location
> and any user could add them to their user pages. There would have to
> be consensus to approve any new templates.
>
> The "unapproved" userboxes would also be listed a central location,
> but they could be added to this repository by anyone. They would exist
> only as code and an example of what the userbox looks like. This code
> would have to be free of fair-use images and must not include any
> categories. Any "unapproved" userboxes that existed as templates could
> be speedily deleted.
>
> With this setup, a userbox stating "This user is a Democrat" would be
> no different that a sentence on their user page stating that they're a
> Democrat. The user wouldn't be included in a category and couldn't be
> identified through Whatlinkshere. There also wouldn't be any concerns
> about censorship or stifling of free speech.
>
> I'm sure this proposal could use some development, but it's a start. Thoughts?

If you really wanted to be thorough, you'd need two further qualifications:

1. No images in userboxes, since the usage list for, say, a donkey
used in the Democrat userbox would show all the user-page inclusions
of the code.
2. Similarly, no links to articles in userboxes.  If, say, the code
for the Democrat userbox contained [[U.S. Democratic Party]], a
determined individual could examine Whatlinkshere for that article to
identify all users with the code.  There would be some false
positives, obviously, from unrelated users having the link on their
userpage; but not so many that this would be infeasible.

The other option, obviously, is to avoid relying on technological
solutions to an essentially social problem ;-)

Kirill Lokshin