[Wikipedia-l] An opinion on personal pages

[Ian]

If there are not personal pages, then there should be some sort of
non-wiki directory of everyone who wants to add themselve. It could have
stuff like what city they live in, what pages they have editied etc.

They do in fact serve a useful purpose. 

Ian Monroe
http://mlug.missouri.edu/~eean/

On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Jimmy Wales jwales at bomis.com XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:

> I think that we should eliminate personal pages, but more importantly,
> we should eliminate the notion that personal pages are ones own to do
> with as one sees fit.  Every wiki page should be open to edit at any
> time.
> 
> There's a tension between the wiki philosophy of edit-anywhere and our
> traditional feelings of authorship, and this tension comes out most
> strongly on personal pages with commentary.  In an encyclopedia
> article, no one gets mad if someone else edits it -- we all agree that
> this is what we are here for, after all.  But in personal pages,
> people are getting mad every day about edits.  That's because they
> think of themselves as the "authors" of those pages.
> 
> I've got a few of them myself -- my statement of principles, for
> example.
> 
> I think that's a bad idea, even though I've done it myself.  I support
> proposals to move commentary out of the wiki, but I don't yet support
> any *particular* notion of how to do it.  A separate wiki?  A separate
> namespace?  There are pros and cons to either, I think.
> 
> -- 
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