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

Revision as of 23:17, 23 February 2008

Revision as of 16:50, 6 March 2008

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:::::::I don't believe we can prevent cliquish behavior be attempting to control editors' use of userspace. So the best counterbalance I believe is encouraging a voluntary [[Transparency (humanities)|transparency]], which at least gives others a chance to recognize it, rather than (perhaps) doubting their own sanity. I don't know about your gun analogy, but I suppose it's somewhat valid. If we make guns illegal only criminals will have guns. If we make political speech a policy violation, it will simply push it off wiki and encourage secretive cliques. -- [[User:Kendrick7|Kendrick7]]^{[[User talk:Kendrick7|talk]]} 18:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much any userpage content can be justified on the grounds that it can help editors find someone with particular interests. Userboxes are just a lot briefer and less liable to violate policies such as [[WP:NOT#BLOG]] than, say, a page of non-Wikipedia-related polemics, so we have allowed them. But now we have a situation where some people have pages and pages of userboxes.

Personally, I would say that we should open up the userpages to allow anything but personal attacks, copyvios, and other "harmful" stuff. One could glean a lot more useful, interesting info about someone from a lengthy essay than from userboxes. Some people aren't as eloquent, though, or don't have time to explain their opnion on every subject, and may prefer to just sum up their opinion in a userbox. Admittedly, userboxes are an efficient vehicle for stating your opinions and interests in relation to a vast array of different subjects.

If we want to get rid of userbox-based opinion-expressing in general all, we could neuter the whole thing by limiting people to expressing ''interest'', e.g. "This user is interested in abortion debates" or something. But people would probably get around it by stating their interests in a way that makes their opinion obvious. E.g., "This user is interested in the implications present day abortion restrictions could have for the future of women's rights over their own bodies."

All in all, it's going to be a big mess trying to restrict userboxes, and I think we should just leave it alone, except for the aforementioned restrictions on personal attacks, etc. [[User:Obuibo Mbstpo|Obuibo Mbstpo]] ([[User talk:Obuibo Mbstpo|talk]]) 16:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

==Comment by Mtmelendez (1st)==