Wikipedia:Proposed policy on userboxes: Difference between revisions

This page is to discuss a proposed policy on userboxes commonly seen on Wikipedians' user pages; what should be allowed, encouraged, or discouraged in userboxes. It may also touch on whether certain types ought to be speedily deleted. A debate began at the Village pump policy page, and some content from that debate was used to start this proposal.

Please see the proposals page for a substantial amount of older debate which saw a number of proposals listed and voted/commented on by Wikipedians. In light of the fact that this debate was heading toward a confusing stale mate, Harro5 has re-set the page with a bit of a format to encourage initial discussion rather than a premature straw poll.

Background

(taken from Lar's and TantalumTelluride's opening version of this debate, and edited.)

Userboxes started out innocently enough, as informative supplements designed to fit snugly into the Babel templates. Then the userboxes themselves were turned into templates, and the userbox templates began including category tags to automatically categorize user under Category:Wikipedians. And then, of course, a number of Wikipedians began creating humorous parody userboxes (such as {{User Geek}} and {{User n00b}}). They were accordingly assigned templates; and they, too, attempted to categorize users. Anyway, the silly categories and templates eventually found their way to the deletion process. Most were kept, some were deleted, some were moved, some were redirected. The resulting mess led to the recent creation of WikiProject Userboxes, which has done a remarkable job in cleaning up and standardizing the userbox templates and categories. Unfortunately, userbox-related templates, categories, and redirects, etc. were still nominated for deletion. Recently, Kelly Martin speedily deleted dozens of userboxes she thought were incivil, tended to categorize Wikipedians by ideology, contained copyright infringements, or for other similar reasons (Discussion and relevant links can be found at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Kelly Martin.)

Issues regarding userboxes and userpage templates

• Kelly Martin questioned the fair use status and legality of using copyrighted images in userboxes.
• Userboxes have been created with embedded categories leading to a large parent in Category:Wikipedians.
• Many userboxes cover topics/views/interests unrelated to the creating of an encyclopedia.
• Should Wikipedia allow templates designed for the user namespace which blatantly support particular points of view?
• Should we allow templates that serve no purpose other than adding humor to user pages?
• Should we allow categories that divide Wikipedians into political and religious affiliations that can be used for spamming user talk pages?
• What types of templates and what types of categories should be allowed?

Policies relevant to the userbox debate

• User pages - userboxes may contain content not acceptable for userpages, for instance:
  • Fair use - the status of images in userboxes
  • Civility - userboxes may contain offensive or incivil content
  • Personal attacks - userboxes may amount to personal attacks
• WP:NPOV - many userboxes offend against WP:NPOV

Concerns behind regulating userboxes

Note: this is a place for listing brief (i.e. one-line) concerns behind regulating userboxes.

• Many are redundant/pointless (eg. Category:Wikipedians who trust Jimbo or Wikipedia:Userboxes/Colours or Template:user world).
• There should be a system for inclusion as seen for stubs here where new userboxes are debated, rather than simply requesting they be made here.
• Some userboxes should not have categories associated with them as while the box may be amusing, the category is not useful.
• Wikipedia shouldn't be used to organize campaigns to push a particular viewpoint.
• Wikipedia is not LiveJournal
• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
• If there are clear, codified guidelines that have consensual support, including guidelines for what boxes are OK and when boxes that are out of compliance can be speedied, there will hopefully be less recurrence of controversy such as the controversy around the recent speedy deletions of boxes by 2 different admins.

Concerns behind not regulating userboxes

Note: this is a place for listing brief (i.e. one-line) concerns behind not regulating userboxes.

• WP:NPOV does not apply in userspace
• We are all human and userboxes can foster collegiality which can reduce friction and make work more pleasant
• Avoid m:instruction creep.
• Regulations like "userboxes shouldn't violate copyright" are redundant with existing regulations and thus a complete waste of time.
• Userboxes are a trivial fad not worth our time messing with.
• Userboxes are fun. Fun things help the community. WP needs a strong community.
• Writing up and enforcing regulations takes time away from productive work.
• Userboxes are a (mostly) harmless way to practice template writing techniques.

Concerns behind allowing userpages to have a POV

Note: this is a place for listing brief (i.e. one-line) concerns behind regulating userboxes.

• Wikipedia has a policy of Neutral Point of View.
• Allowing userpages to have a POV can lead to advocacy.
• Even if policies against advocacy exist, enabling mechanisms to make it easy to search for users with a particular POV will make enforcement difficult and undermine the NPOV policy

Concerns behind not allowing userpages to have a POV

Note: this is a place for listing brief (i.e. one-line) concerns behind regulating userboxes.

• Userspace is not article space and users do have points of view even if articles should not. Allowing userspace to have POV does not contravene the general NPOV policy.
• Having a point of view is not the same as advocating it.
• Knowing an editors tendancy towards bias might help someone looking at their edits to determine POV.
• If users are allowed to express their POV on their user page they might not feel the need to vandalise article pages.
• As a user´s POV is part of her/his identity, and users are allowed to write information about themselves on their userpage, POV should be allowed there too.
• Making policy because we think POV userpages might lead to NPOV edits in real articles or deliberate voting blocs is in violation of the spirit of WP:AGF.

Discussion

Please post all discussion relevant to this proposed policy on the talk page.