Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines/Userbox content: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:35, 22 January 2008

Revision as of 23:07, 25 January 2008

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The "how" is pretty far ahead in time, if it is even realistic that we'll reach that point. In my opinion. <small style="font:bold 10px Arial;display:inline;border:#009 1px dashed;padding:1px 6px 2px 7px;white-space:nowrap">[[User:Equazcion|<font color="#000">Equazcion</font>]] [[User talk:equazcion|•''✗'']]/[[Special:Contributions/Equazcion|''C'' •]] ''22:35, 22 Jan 2008 (UTC)''</small>

==Comment by Smerdis of Tlön==

A technical problem, really. My understanding is that userbox support is currently implemented in some fashion as a template or in the software. This makes it possible to insert original userboxes into a page:

{{userbox

|id-c=red

|info-c=pink

|id=SI = 666

|info=The '''[[SI|metric system]]''' is the work of the '''[[Devil]]'''!

}}<br><br clear=all>

without the inclusion of a specific userbox from a separate page. (I'm particularly proud of the SI=666 equation.) Transclusion achieves the same result, making the added code permanent even if the subpage containing the userbox is deleted. Boxes can be done outside the userbox template as well, even if the resulting gibberish is harder to read:

<div style="float: left; border:solid silver 1px; margin: 1px;">

{| cellspacing="0" style="width: 238px; background: white;"

| style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: silver; text-align: center; font-size: {{{5|{{{id-s|14}}}}}}pt; color: {{{id-fc|black}}};" | '''[[Image:Bananen Frucht.jpg|20px]]'''

| style="font-size: {{{info-s|8}}}pt; padding: 4pt; line-height: 1.25em; color: {{{info-fc|black}}};" | This user believes the earth to be '''[[banana|banana-shaped]]'''.

|}</div><br><br clear=all>

As far as I can tell, this isn't about userboxes, not really. People who are strongly motivated to include these statements on their user pages will be able to find a way to get them there, as long as the capability remains in the software. Removing the templates and support for other markup codes probably runs afoul of the iron law of unintended consequences. Nothing short of that, coupled with a will to officiously edit other user's user pages to remove the statements that used to sit in userboxes, will actually achieve the results that are apparently desired.

There are other reasons to be against reopening this old controversy; others have pretty much covered it. So long as code remains for making userboxes of any kind, it may be used for expressive purposes on user pages. - [[User:Ihcoyc|Smerdis of Tlön]] ([[User talk:Ihcoyc|talk]]) 23:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

==General discussion==