[WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

[John Lee]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 1/10/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 1/10/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Peter Mackay wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>><snip>
>>>>
>>>>If people are using Wikipedia to play rather than build an encyclopaedia,
>>>>then they should be encouraged in this primary objective, not castigated for
>>>>extraneous activies, because for every frivolous userbox, I dare say if I
>>>>went looking, I could find some other piece of useless guff on the user
>>>>pages of experienced editors. Let people play, if it does no harm and they
>>>>are participating in community activities, but also encourage them to be
>>>>more productive.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>The difference is experienced users tend to contribute to article space
>>>as well. Many userbox fanatics make minimal or no edits to articles. (Of
>>>course, most people with userboxes aren't fanatics; I have quite a few
>>>userboxes myself. But there are a few rogue bunch out there who seem
>>>more intent on userboxes than building an encyclopedia.)
>>>      
>>>
>>Take a look at the edits of [[User:Jimbo Wales]] and [[User:Anthere]].
>> There are productive things to do other than edit articles.  (This is
>>not at all to knock their contributions, it is instead to knock the
>>notion that article count means everything).
>>
>>    
>>
>Or [[User:Kelly Martin]].  I count one article edit in the last 500,
>though I might have missed a few.
>
>Deleting userboxes is as productive toward the goal of creating an
>encyclopedia as creating them.
>  
>
These people have assumed duties that aid the process of building an 
encyclopedia which do not (directly, at least) involve article editing. 
A new user (and pretty much everyone who isn't on the Board, Medcom, 
Arbcom, etc.) does not have such responsibilities. The only way they/we 
can help out will almost certainly involve article editing (stub 
sorting, AfD/speedy tagging, etc.). Even some niche tasks (like 
preparing spoken articles or uploading images) involve some article editing.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])