Wikipedia talk:Proposed policy on userboxes

• Archive 1

Fresh start

In light of the fact that we were heading down a spiral to nowhere, I've reset the debate to look for a discussion to see if we even want a policy, rather than confusing policies about not wanting policies, and trying to keep track of an incredibly complicated vote/debate we had going. If I've been a dick in doing this, say so here, but also say why, and try to see if we can get a genuine discussion going rather than a straw poll. Thanks. Harro5 06:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Begin from fundamental principles

My suggestion, for what it's worth, is that we stop trying to write proposed wordings of rules and "voting" on them. Rather, I think an approach would be to try to get principles (based on core WP values and well accepted precedent) articulated and arrive at consensus (or realise that it can't be arrived at for a particular facet) for the various underlying fundamental questions around userboxes. In fact I thought that was what would be done first, but when Kelly presented a draft I thought, hey, maybe this is farther along and went straight to proposing mods. So if no one else does it by tomorrow, I'll try to make a subpage of the project page that has some principles that we can try to agree on, and ask people to edit them rather than "vote" on them. It's what I should have done in the first place and I apologise to the community for not having done it when I created the page by copying material from WP:VP that User:TantalumTelluride posted, material that I really thought was a good starting point for articulating principles. ++Lar: t/c 06:15, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We need to have a knock-down drag-out brawl over whether to even have a policy first. — Phil Welch Katefan's ridiculous poll 07:02, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

That's what this is now set up for. Brawl away, to quote you. Harro5 08:02, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Protect all existing userboxes as long as this discussion continues

After Kelly´s action some time ago, now all religious userboxes have been speedy deleted. Without any warning or discussion. I think this is outrageous and all userboxes should be protected from now on against this kind of admin vandalism. Larix 09:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Both sides in the argument have agreed that there are some userboxes which have got to go. Protecting the lot makes no difference to deleting them; it's purely symbolic. However, symbolically, it does stop administrators deleting userboxes which do need to be deleted. Rob Church ^Talk 10:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

There is absolutely no concensus on how to deal with pov userboxes yet. So it is appalling to just massively delete these ones. I'm not talking about wikipedians who believe in santa here, but about humanists, muslims, jews and so on. Larix 10:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I find this very upsetting. I fail to see what urgent threat is posed by these userboxes that could not wait two or three days until we hash out some sort of preliminary policy, and I am extremely offended that whoever deleted these userboxes didn't have the common courtesy to post a message somewhere explaining what he/she was doing and why. After the RfC, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior and I don't see how it serves any purpose other than to irritate people. (It's worked; I'm irritated.) The point about userbox proliferation has been made, and the people here are working to remedy the problem. Mass userbox deletion with no explanation given is absolutely uncalled for. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 10:25, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and even if we had decided that these templates should be deleted, many of the proposals on the table suggest that users should be given the chance to place the code directly on their userpages; deleting the templates AND the pages at Wikipedia:Userboxes prevents this. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 10:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

It is User:Tony Sidaway. deletion log. Larix 10:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes should not be speedied, especially while such discussions are ongoing. Such behavior is certainly uncivil, and should be treated as such. Kaldari 13:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I am not certain that 'both sides have agreed that there "are" some userboxes which have got to go'. This seems to be a bold statement. I think that under the current circumstances, boxes should not be restricted. There is already the TfD process for removing templates, and it should work quite well for userbox templates. It would be nice to avoid speedy deletion in user space. --Dschor 13:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that general consensus supports any userbox being placed on a user's page, as it is free to be POV. The issue comes from templatised userboxes, and their listing at WP:UBX. I know what my POV regarding categorisation is - that is laid out in proposal #4, but achieving consensus here is going to be very difficult. The final solution would be to ban templatising any userbox, and forcing users to create individual ones for each's page... but that wouldn't be very popular methinks! Deano (Talk) 17:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

2/3 of my attempted edits in the last 5 hours have failed due to server load. I do not know how much that is due to failure of the userboxes we love to comply with WP:AIM, how much is normal for this time of day (I usually editing late nite), or other purposes. Meanwhile the community disruption continues with more players taking over what User:Kelly Martin had quit doing pending resolution of the RFC. User:AlMac|^(talk) 20:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Use of wikipedia for nonencyclopedic purposes

Little pretty boxes are not the issue. Use of wikipedia for nonencyclopedic purposes is a key issue in the use of pretty boxes. Deal with the real issues and the derived cases take care of themselves. To what extent social behavior on Wikipedia enhances encyclopedia building is highly subjective and no one should contemptuously or arrogantly or high-handedly act as if their assessment is unquestionable. Voting can not make unencyclopedic behavior acceptable, but what does and what does not help build the encyclopedia is no one person's right to decide. I think the real issues are in that mess of words somewhere and policies on pretty boxes are beside the point. WAS 4.250 13:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

WAS 4.250 cuts to the crux of the matter. I think in that:

1. Use of images that are being used outside of FU Wiki policy should be speedily deleted (eg templates)
2. Userboxes are a fad. I saw what others were doing and started adding my own before I saw how silly some had gotten IMHO...but that's just it: my opinion. What does it really matter if someone writes "I am a christain" on their userpage or puts/references a pretty box with a symbol of a cross on it.
3. Meaningless issue for us to continue wasting time on and too time consuming to police. Let people build userpages as they see fit as long as it does not violate the userpage policy, which is???? --Censorwolf 20:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
4. which is WP:UP, I believe. ++Lar: t/c 05:08, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What about the Babel boxes? This entire discussion inspire me to re-read WP:UP, and I decided to remove everything from my user page that wasn't related to writing an encyclopedia. I realized that meant removing not only the religious, political, etc., user boxes from my page, but the Babel boxes as well, because frankly, the fact that I have only a basic knowledge of Lower Sorbian is about as relevant to writing an English-language encyclopedia as the fact that I eat meat and was born in the year of the Monkey. If the consensus is that userboxes must be relevant to writing Wikipedia, doesn't that mean the Babel boxes have to go too? --Angr (tɔk) 12:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Some hard facts would be helpful

Here is some information I think would make it easier for us to resolve this issue:

1. We need to quantify the effect that userbox templates have on Wikipedia, in terms of sever load or whatever. This will give us an idea of the urgency of this task and how widespread the change needs to be. I have seen a couple of people make comments vaguely linking userbox proliferation and Wikipedia's fund drive, but correlation does not imply causation. Let's get some hard facts on how userboxes affect Wikipedia.
2. We need to come up with specific instances where userbox templates have been used for various purposes, good or bad, so that we can evaluate the non-technical issues that have been brought up. If userboxes and their corresponding categories are being used for vote-stuffing, provide examples. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 20:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

A third way

As Wikipedians, we must always try to make compromises in a fashion that addresses as many people's concerns as possible. As can be seen above, many people have concerns that they feel are best addressed by regulating userboxes in certain ways. Similarly, others have concerns with the idea of regulating userboxes. It is the intent of those working on this proposal to address as many of these concerns as satisfactorily as possible, so we may be advised not to limit ourselves to either "drawing up a set of regulations" or "not doing anything at all". There may be a third way to resolve this.

• I had this suggestion on the proposals page, but it got lost in the crowd: "Could there possibly be a place like Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals where people propose new userboxes and they are created or not based on that vote? Then, we could create a speedy delete criteria for any new userbox created that hasn't gone through this voting process. At least that would regulate it more than the current scheme (Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/Ideas) which basically sees people say, 'Can someone make this?', and it's done. This keeps the deletionists happy by slowing down the influx of new userboxes, and also allows userboxes on all topics to be created." Harro5 10:36, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm glad people are looking for a compromise, and there is certainly something to say for your idea. But I do think we need a decision wether userboxes with a pov are allowed or not - otherwise I'm afraid we'll be debating the issue forever, for every userbox created (and probably afterwards proposed for deletion again).... Larix 11:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Agreed, the root question needs consensus. See below. (and feel free to refactor or move it if necessary) ++Lar: t/c 20:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I still think that fails to address the concern of instruction creep, and especially process creep. Also, why institutionalize such a silly fad? — Phil Welch Katefan's poll, which she herself considers ridiculous, as it's about whether we like the rock band Rush 11:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Doesn't that just destroy the spirit of anyone can edit? Ian¹³_ID:540053 19:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
    • It's obviously not just a fad. This "fad" has contributed to the loss of two Wikipedians already (Firebug and someone else) and an ugly fight on WP:RFAR. The spirit of anyone can edit means you can contribute to Wikipedia building an encyclopedia, and you must do so with the bounds of policy and the five pillars. We need to work out if making userboxes with a POV falls into these bounds. Harro5 21:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment: no regulation, please

Regarding the proliferation of user boxes, I find this an endearing and valuable community-building aspect of WP. Since there are few tangible rewards for working on wikipedia, camaraderie is really really important. I think we should enforce that they are all of the form "Template:User ___" but other than that, allow freedom within the normal wp policies.

Regarding POV on user pages: I believe that WP policy allows for POV in the User: namespace (and thus templates used in user space). Moreover, I find specific value in people placing their personal biases and alignments on their user pages. I am under no such delusion that we can ever really escape POV (we can only do our best to approach NPOV), so it is very helpful when checking history or contributions to see where people are coming from. Brighterorange 20:59, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I have not really made up my mind, nor do I think this is too important. However when I see things like:

I think when we get to the point of boxes like this we need to have a policy regulating linking users opposed to certain ideologies. What should be done about things like that? It does seem to be getting out of hand. gren グレン 21:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be an unhealthy amount of boxes denouncing groups rather than supporting your own. Template:User GWB for example. This doesn't need to be on userpages, and belongs on blogs. Wikipedia needs to stay focused, and if your a new user who sees someone revert your edits to Bush's article for example, and go to their userpage, and see that userbox, it's likely you will start a partisan argument about doing the work of the Democratic Party, or being a communist, or some ridiculous thing like that. These userboxes aren't just "fun", they are clear statements that I edit articles with a specific POV related to this debate, and so am going to take badly to opposing views, even if I'd like to claim otherwise. This isn't good for anyone, and so we need to be careful how much free reign e allwo with these templates. Harro5 21:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll agree that such sentiment is unhealthy. But do you think that a policy against such userboxes really addresses the underlying problem? Every editor has POV. Being up front about one's POV in userspace but striving for NPOV in articles is the best scenario, in my view. I don't think a "don't ask don't tell" policy (if that's what you're proposing) does anything except make the problems more insidious. Brighterorange 22:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that the user space is a suitable place for such sentiments. An attempt to censor userboxes is harmful to the purpose of user pages. I for one would rather have this information, and appreciate the opportunity to make my POV clear to the community, even as I make my best effort to maintain NPOV in the article space. Censoring user page content that does not violate policy is a poor precedent. --Dschor 23:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

That particular user box violates several policies and should be deleted. Kelly Martin (talk) 23:49, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Can you list some policies that it violates? Sorry, I am arriving to this discussion late, I guess. Brighterorange 00:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

It shows a POV. But I don't think it has been clearly shown that having a POV is disallowed in userspace, has it?. Near as I can tell it is not an advocacy, it is not asking other users to dislike Scientology. Jimbo has asked us to deemphasise external beliefs, so it's not a box I'd choose to use, and it's in a category that I would put on the "discouraged" list (I support the notion of discouraged sorts of boxes, although I confess I have a FSM box and an atheist box on my page), but I would not ban/delete it. It MAY contain a copyrighted image (I haven't checked). However the MOST damning thing about it is how bright yellow and orange it is. Those colors are so jarring they must not be suffered to be shown together. (K, kidding about that last part. But they ARE jarring!) ++Lar: t/c 00:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What I'm having difficulty figuring out is why many of the userbox opponents a) think that having a POV keeps us from editing NPOV (seriously, almost everyone has a POV on something), b) think that prohibiting userboxes and/or having "don't ask don't tell" keeps anyone from having a POV, c) think that having little decorative boxes on our userpages keep us from writing an encyclopedia, d) think that liberal Wikipedians and conservative Wikipedians necessarily must hate each other, and e) dislike it when userboxes or cats are used to inform editors of a discussion going on (a good example is this discussion, which I and other editors find out about by being contacted through the cats in question). It appears that the only inherently negative use for them is to gang up to win edit wars on articles, something we already have policies to regulate (and not a good reason to delete the boxes or cats, since most good things can be misused, eg "let's make computers illegal since they can be used to send out viruses"). Yeltensic42.618 15:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Policies relevant to the userbox debate

regarding this policy as it stands now

• WP:NPOV - many userboxes offend against WP:NPOV - NPOV is a concern for articles, not User pages.
  • I will continue to argue strongly that userboxes should be allowed to show POV, but I nevertheless feel that NPOV is a policy that is relevant. it's relevant in that it doesn't apply as strongly (or at all) in userspace and should be mentioned in the list of relevant policies. (while you could argue that every policy that doesn't apply in user space could be mentioned, the POV/NPOVness of boxes seems to be a critical thing that this debate turns on. I think CIVIL bears mentioning here too for the same reason, and it is in fact mentioned just above that bullet. ++Lar: t/c 00:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • It largely depends on what namespace the template is created in, doesn't it? That's a bit of a technicality, but I think it might be true anyway. Harro5 03:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • In the debates that I was involved in regarding userboxes, mainly the Democrat and Republicans, editors who were pro-userboxes states that the Fair Use of images extended into user pages. However, the same people often say that NPOV does not apply to user pages; so where is it that certain policies inexplicably end? Fair Use is not just a guideline; the images are copyrighted, and copyright owners can sue. It's in place for a reason. Eightball 03:36, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Agree. I strongly feel that userboxes cannot, must not have copyvio problems. Fair use is for purpose of review and commentary, and nothing else, and I'm not sure I see how showing how you feel about Pepsi, for example, is fair use by any stretch of the imagination. I think the mechaniasm that has been proposed (see the archived older version of the proposed policy page) for sheperding userboxes through a creation process would help address this. ++Lar: t/c 04:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I also agree with Lar very strongly. I know that Wikipedians are creative people, so if people wish to have an icon on their userbox, they should try to be creative and come up with their own icon. However, with some of the recent problems we have been seeing with the servers, it would be each template's creators wishes to include an icon or not. However, it must be under a free license, not fair use. Zach ^{(Smack Back) Fair use policy} 04:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with User:Lar that policies can still be relevant even if they don't necessarily apply. Remember also that policies can be changed. So, references to existing policy should not be considered a finding of law, but rather, a pointer to existing concensus which help guide us here. So, to that end, I will add some sub-topics for individual policy/guideline pages. --DragonHawk 07:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

User page guidelines

User page guidelines

• Commentary on what should and should not be on a user page. Ultimately, it appears inconclusive for this discussion. Opinion pieces not related to Wikipedia are discouraged, but community-building is encouraged. --DragonHawk 07:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

No personal attacks

No personal attacks

• A personal attack is a attach on a particular person. By extension, it could be argued that user boxes should not be used to attack a particular person or group of persons. --DragonHawk 07:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

NPOV policy

NPOV policy

• This has been getting brought up a lot in this discussion. Previous concensus appears to be that user pages are explictly allowed to contain opinion. I see the fact that template namespace is not user page namespace as a technicality; user boxes are, by definition, intended for user pages, and thus can be considered part of user space. OTOH, it does seem somewhat counter to the spirit of the Wikipedia project to fill one's user pages with POV just because we can. Spirit vs letter of the law and all that. --DragonHawk 07:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not ...

What Wikipedia is and is not

... an indiscriminate collection of information

• Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Taken to an extreme, perhaps the whole user box system should be scrapped. Maybe they're really just not appropriate for Wikipedia. (I don't really think this myself, but it's a point worth considering.) --DragonHawk 07:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

... a soapbox

• Wikipedia is not a soapbox. I think this one is very apropos. Sure, it is mainly focused on articles, but the key point is that The Wikipedia projec, as a whole, is not a soapbox. Using user boxes to push one's personal agenda seems very much against a core principle here. --DragonHawk 07:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Key policies

Policies and guidelines

• Respect other contributors. This is one of the four "key policies" listed, but has no single page of it's own (is actually has several). This policy is extremely relevant to this discussion, I think. I think it's clear that anything, user page or otherwise, which fails to respect other Wikipedians is Not Good. --DragonHawk 07:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment by User:Eightball

In an edit summary just now on the project page (attached to this edit that changed what was lined out around NPOV as an objection, Eightball said "Many say that Fair Use extends to userpages, but NPOV does not; this is contradicting. Either they both do, or neither do."

• My response: In my view these are different things. Fair use is legalistic. ALL publications, websites, etc, at least those in the US, have to abide by Fair use, or may get sued. It applies to ALL content, and specifically, it applies at WP in articlespace, templatespace, categoryspace, userspace, you-name-itspace. (and yes I possibly run afoul of Raul's rule about who knows copy law and who doesn't). NPOV is a policy of Wikipedia. It applies where it is chosen to apply. It's an unshakable policy, with respect to articles. Jimbo has said it is not negotiable. However he did NOT say it applies to userspace, and common convention here, as this newb sees it, is that it is OK for users to say they have a point of view. That's getting to the crux of the problem. Is it or isn't it OK? I think it is, I think policy and precedent here say it is too... see WP:UP. (as an aside, it may be under this interpretation that templatespace can't have POV, so all boxes that did assert POV would have to live in userspace and not templatespace)++Lar: t/c 04:48, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
• I'd like to note that NPOV does not apply to talk pages the same way it does to articles, either. As far as I can tell, users are free to make their personal POVs clear on talk page discussions when they are relevant to editing of the article. In fact, I don't see how we could have productive discussion without this. Here are some examples of edits I've made to talk pages expressing my POV: "I really don't think this section is going to work out"; "If people were to come forth with examples of the term "heteroflexible" being specifically used in the news media and so on, I think that would be grounds for re-opening the debate on this topic"; "The assumption here that any criticism of Christianity must be based on false premises seemed offbase and not at all NPOV to me"; "I also believe that practitioners of my own religion, Hellenic polytheism, should be willing to walk hand in hand with Wiccans, but I would not add information on Hellenic polytheism to this article because it is not relevant." Thus, NPOV, as it is being interpreted here, already does not apply to portions of Wikipedia. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 05:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Excellent example. Arguably trying to speak NPOV-ishly in that context would be impossible and worse, useless to making progress. Another place where POV comes up is in (x)fD... if only to disclose one's leanings and perhaps establish credibility on the topic of notability, although that's controversial.++Lar: t/c 05:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • My counter-response: First off, Fair Use is considered a guideline on Wikipedia. I'm not refering to the legal equivalent, I'm refering to Wikipedia's interpretation of it, and the way it is applied. I am not trying to interpret the policies and guidelines any differently than they already have been. My _only_ point is that the proponents of userboxes are choosing where to apply certain policies and guidelines. It seems to me that if I did the same I could "choose" to ignore half the policies of WP; if enough did this, it would destroy the system. The policies are in place for a reason. Editors are creating userboxes with copyrighted images, saying Fair Use extends to userboxes, while they also violate NPOV, which they say doesn't extend to user pages (Fair Use, in my, explicitly excludes user pages, while the wording of NPOV seems more ambiguous). You can't be allowed to pick and choose your guidelines. Eightball 06:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• • • • You won't see me supporting that stance. I think all fair use images need to be removed from userboxes, forthwith, and do not see fair use as a valid defence for inclusion copyvio images in boxes (as I have said already, rather emphatically). But they ARE being removed. the Userbox project is cranking through all the boxes and fixing them. My point is that violating Fair Use can get WP sued if someone pushed the matter. Violating NPOV is not likely to get WP sued. Hence they are different. But to your point of picking and choosing, I agree, there should not be picking and choosing. That's not the same as deciding which policies apply to what by applying principles though. ++Lar: t/c 07:31, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• • • • Fair use images can't be used on userpages because WP:UP specifically says so. Do you see anything in WP:UP that says, "Userpages must be NPOV"? I didn't think so. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 07:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• • • Well I'm glad we could come to a conclusion. Eightball 07:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC) (quietly hums the Golden Girls theme song)

Bit of a refactor

I tried a bit of a refactor here: Policies relevant to the userbox debate to try to capture that some people might think these policies are relevant, because there was a lot of back and forth and maybe this is inclusionary enough to be good? ++Lar: t/c 05:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Basically a user conduct issue

From my perspective, the actual problem seen at least by Tony Sidaway is that userboxes are being used to rally POV crusades (especially regarding deletion). I would prefer a policy to deter this behavior directly, whether carried out through userboxes or not, by blocking/banning the users engaging in it, rather than deleting the userboxes themselves, which 95% of users seem able to employ harmlessly. Deleting the userboxes is at best a stopgap, as users who are operating with the intent of deliberatly subverting neutrality will surely find another way to do so. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's a stopgap. But the least we can do is to deny the enemy of consensus and neutrality the free use of the most powerful tools at our disposal. If I want to tell the world I'm a Bigendian I'll do so, but it would be wrong for me to add a "Bigendian Wikipedians" category to my userpage enabling all of us Bigendians t operate as a bloc. This is what userboxes do. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

If userboxes did not add to categories would that be as good (or almost as good) of a stopgap as deleting them altogether? I suspect that the dedicated team of editors at the Userbox project, if that were the consensus, would have that fixed in nothing flat. The speed at which they are fixing the fair use issue, and at which they are fixing the multilevel template substitution issue, is nothing short of remarkable (as well as amazingly commendable). PS, Tony, I for one am glad you are here and talking about this. Very glad. Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 07:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that as a stopgap it is harmful to other concerns as well, both in that it pointlessly alienates the many people who manage to use these userboxes harmlessly, and in that it deprives us of the utility gained by having people organized into these categories when they are employed productively. I don't see any reason to undertake this solution to the problem, which has these obvious flaws, when we could attack the problem directly without causing collateral damage. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiProjects do EXACTLY the same in some cases. - But they're not banned or with possible policy to stop users "grouping" together: This happens anyway in the long run:

For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam:The Muslim Guild (and it's splinter WikiProjects for Shia and Sunni) looks like it's the Islam equivalent of the Catholic WikiProject Sidaway doesn't like so much (there's already a Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam for people that don't necessarily follow the religion)

Stuff like this will always happen on Wikipedia, what you are trying to do is stop people grouping together by view by making it harder to find people: This is silly, it happens anyway on Wikipedia --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 07:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree its not userboxes which is the problem, also its not users grouping themselves together. What is the problem is when users group together in an attempt to go against the core NPOV policy, that is when userboxes are used as find users to swing a vote for a particular POV. Even if userboxes were removed users would still find ways to group together and these could happen outside the sphere of wikipedia where there is less chance of regulation. What is really needed is a Wikipedia:Policy on cordinated actions by factions or something like that.

Userboxes do actually offer a means of identifying factions. If you suspect a cordinated action then you could actually prove that it is such though looking at their userboxes. Better to keep things in the open than create secret societies.

Luckly we have a strong consensus policy, to prevent a vote for delection all which is needed is one post pointing out the coordinated action of other posters and the vote should fail. Ultimately coordinated actions against NPOV could result in users being banned. --Pfafrich 09:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

refactor

( Moved MSK's "counterargument" to talk page ++Lar: t/c 07:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC) )

Tony added this:

• • Neutrality and Consensus - userboxes can easily be used by POV pushers to enable them to contact a large number of like-minded people so as to destroy the effectiveness of our neutrality policy by subverting normal consensus-based decision-making. Case in point: 9 out of 11 keep voters in the Catholic Alliance deletion debate did so after being contacted by the page's creator who found them through a userbox declaring them to be Catholics and placing them into a category that he was able to scan at the press of a button. (this has to do with usage)

MSK replied:

• • • Counter-argument: People will always find other Wikipedians with similar beliefs or interests and form groups of friends in their time on Wikipedia anyway, this only speeds the process and gives less of an advantage to newer users who haven't been around long enough to develop a network of Wiki-friends. Also categories help find other users knowledgeable or interested about the same subjects to help improve articles that might otherwise be neglected. It's not so different from a WikiProject or from users in fact stating their interests on their user page without using a "user box" for it as has been going on for a long time, or user categories without matching userboxes such as those in Category:Wikipedians.

I suggest refactoring it into a point in one of the pro/cons as it's not a policy point per se. The points are points, they should be countered in the pro/con section. IMHO. ++Lar: t/c 07:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, done now - hope that's better --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 07:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Community

One thing user boxes let us do is build communities. Communuity building yields two major kinds of benefits. One is that people interested in the same things, or sharing knowledge on the same subjects, can collaborate better as a community. Experts on, say, geology, can coordinate their efforts, distribute the load, and check each other's work. Such a community can even be a resource to outsiders -- to continue my example, if someone else needs to check a geological fact, they can go to the geology community. Most or all of the WikiProjects are fall into this category. The other benefit from community building is less tangible. By making Wikipedia a place people feel like they belong, where they want to come to, we increase the overall quality and quantity of contribution. These are all Good Things, and reasons why User Boxes can be Good Things.

However, as a counter point to all that, it should be noted that putting people into groups does not always build community; indeed, it can do the opposite. Grouping people can divide people. Any time you create a group that is "in", everyone else becomes "out". This is an ancient human behavioral pattern. Being a member of a group that others are not a member of can be powerful and addictive in all the wrong ways.

So, I think one key thing to look at here is: Does the group created by a user box bring people together, or push them apart?

Given that criteria, I realize now that perhaps some of the user boxes on my own user page are, perhaps, not as nice as they should be. Rather then saying "I contribute with Foo", perhaps it would be better if I just said "I know a lot about Foo".

--DragonHawk 07:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Please be careful in refactoring

MSK while you refactored helpfully, I think this point got lost from the policy points

• • Neutrality and Consensus - userboxes can easily be used by POV pushers to enable them to contact a large number of like-minded people so as to destroy the effectiveness of our neutrality policy by subverting normal consensus-based decision-making. Case in point: 9 out of 11 keep voters in the Catholic Alliance deletion debate did so after being contacted by the page's creator who found them through a userbox declaring them to be Catholics and placing them into a category that he was able to scan at the press of a button. (this has to do with usage)

So I put it back. It's a valid policy concern whether you agree with it or not, and we must be careful not to lose text accidentally. IMHO. ++Lar: t/c 07:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Didn't mean to delete it, sorry

I was just about to add it back then came back after realising you had already hah. Didn't read properly }. Ok, I tried to make it a bit more NPOV: It must be noted that most of the "applicable policy" bit is things from the "concerns about not regulating userboxes" bit. --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 07:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Ya, it does (read like a personal view) at that, even after you AGFed it... See if Tony's willing to move it out of the policies list and into the appropriate pros/cons section would be my suggestion. (the pro/cons sections still don't quite seem to have the right titles either but they're clearer than they were, the reason there are two sections are to separate userboxes from stating preferences/viewpoints, it's possible there are things about a box that is completely preference statement free that are good or bad) ++Lar: t/c 07:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that if you look at the case objectively, userboxes on political stances have any detrimental effect. It's mentioned above that Catholic users had been called in and therefore artificially made it seem as if the article's Catholic POV was correct. However, it seems that these are currently userboxes on a broad range of stances, and each of them has significant numbers of users. So, if the dispute was, say, between Catholics and Atheists, and a single Catholic user called in others found via userboxes, what prevents the Atheists from doing the same, for example? Additionally, there is a big cost to this in terms of freedom of expression. Wikipedian user pages should not be censored against this type of material, particularly since people have been allowed to write personal points of view on their user pages since Wikipedia began in 2001. For that reason, I believe that advocacy through userboxes is not a bad thing at all; in fact, it can help make the Wikipedia community much more vibrant. Not to mention the many social reasons why userboxes are important - they enable Wikipedia users to know each other better and, more importantly, they enable users to check each other for NPOV problems. For example, if I'm having a dispute or discussion about an article with another user, and that user has userboxes which indicate political and religious POV, I know where that user's stance is coming from, and I can therefore argue with him in a much more efficient way, thus resolving the dispute much faster. Understanding and knowing other users during a dispute is, in my opinion, the best tool to lead to efficient resolution, without descending into alienation and mutual revert wars and insults. Ronline ✉ 11:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Some concrete examples of belief and conviction-based userboxes being abused

I've mentioned how I think that belief and conviction-based userboxes will be abused and I've given one good example where 9 out of 11 keep voters on an article up for deletion voted after their talk page was spammed.

Perhaps people are saying this was a one-off, a fluke, just one user who overstepped that mark. Not a bit of it. Only the previous week, the following two incidents took place and again involved (to some greater of lesser extent) someone looking in a user category planted on a page by a user box and then spamming the talk pages.

Of course we don't know how many times someone has abused these categories in a savvy way, contacting people by email instead.

I'm sorry that my examples are all based around similar issues. It's not that I have a thing about Catholics (I was raised as a Catholic myself), but that (including the example that I gave before) these are the three examples that come most readily to hand. I remembered the Pitchka one from last month, and found the Chooserrr one while looking for it. I don't even strongly disagree with the opinions expressed in the talk page spam, but I do think that this manner of approach severely compromises our policies on consensus and neutrality. s

• Pitchka (talk · contribs) (aka Dwain) between 2336 on 15 December, 2005 and 0254 the following morning contacts the following editors:
  • User:Tobit User:Burwellian User:Nainfa User:Sebastian Prospero User:Tdxiang User:Psy guy User:PaulHanson User:Patsw User:Mred64 User:Merovingian User:Lacrimosus User:Klemen Kocjancic User:Kakero User:Jrquinlisk User:JohnAlbertRigali User:Gentgeen User:GVOLTT User:Getcrunk User:Eoghanacht User:EliasAlucard User:*drew User:Dcgomez User:Yo Mama 5000 User:Canadian Mike User:Hollow Wilerding User:Bryan Nguyen User:Brisvegas User:Avalon User:Victor User:Army1987 User:Str1977 User:Acetic Acid User:Sawran User:Jakes18 User:Chooserr User:Anti-Anonymex2 User:Dominick User:Christopher Erickson User:Elliskev User:GreatGatsby User:Ironbrew User:Shanedidona User:Sherurcij User:WikiSceptic User:Thomas Aquinas User:TheQuaker User:Sbwii User:Speculative catholic User:Musical Linguist User:Jack Cox User:Danthemankhan User:Kinneyboy90 User:Hégésippe Cormier User:EvKnight13 User:Danthemankhan
  • The wording: Pro-life celebrities category up for deletion!. Hi, I see that you are listed as a Pro-Life Wikipedian, well the Pro-life celebrities category is up for deletion. The abortion zealots don't want anyone to think that any celebrity is actually pro-life. Dwain
• Chooserr (talk · contribs) contacts the following people listed as "Pro-life" between 0700 and 0702 on 20 December, 2005:
  • User:Musical Linguist
  • User:Thomas Aquinas
  • User:Dominick
  • User:Elliskev
  • User:*drew
  • The wording: Sean Black has removed an informative section from the Contraceptive patch article describing a law suit which is currently taking place and some of the risks involved in using such barbaric devices. Since you are listed as Pro-Life I was wondering if you might restore the original version, for I don't personally want to get baited into a 3rvt ban. Thank you, Chooserr

--Tony Sidaway|Talk 08:30, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiProjects do exactly the same: grouping Wikipedians together by interest, political or religious affiliation, and also this is just a more conspicuous way of things that already go on without userboxes: People naturally form groups of friends and some do tend to pick up this "pack reverting" technique, categories or no --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 08:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Two counterpoints to your response:

• Wikiprojects are bound by the neutrality policy and may not have closed membership.

• Wikipedia Categories certainly don't have closed membership either, though.
• People may not be allowed to blatantly push POV on WikiProjects, but they can still link to relevant articles with the intentions that those people with that particular POV will revert war because of the very fact they're in a particular Project: In fact Categories are much more inconvenient to gather large amount of editors to sway votes etc because there is no centralised message board, each person must be contacted individually. --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 09:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• Putting a message on a WikiProject page is not the same as spamming a score or more of user talk pages.

It has the same effect though, not taking into account the actual disruptiveness of spam. --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 09:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the issue here is very different. Because people have general freedom of expression on user pages, it is important to ensure that this doesnn't leak into the category space and enable pushers of one point of view or another. That is what the belief-based userboxes do (I've no great objection to the vast majority of userboxes). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 08:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe, but the problem is it can sometimes be helpful for good faith actions like trying to find people with similar interests to contribute with though --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 09:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

In this case it seems the userboxes were used to preserve NPOV. By calling for deletion maybe it was the pro-choice who were trying to push their POV? (Don't know what I'm on about!) --Pfafrich 09:30, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

In response to Mistress Selina Kyle's point, I completely agree. I have a Template:user advogato userbox on my own page that I constructed myself. It identifies me as an apprentice member of the Advogato community, which describes itself as "a community resource for free software developers." However this is not quite the same as a box identifying me as a Bigendian in politics, an Omnian in religion, and that I believe in the rights of fleebles to graze unfettered on the hills. These latter are the kinds of userbox that could lead to abuse (and have already done so). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it is very important to maintain these userboxes, because it does lead to a more balanced POV for Wikipedia overall. In fact, people will really only "canvas" others of a similar point of view to come when the opposite point of view has more power in a dispute. For example, if a certain article is given, say, a religious slant, Atheist Wikipedians will be able to organise themselves much better to ensure that the article goes back to being NPOV. Ronline ✉ 11:30, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is more akin to a sociocracy than a democracy; we want power of logic to be the most important, not power in numbers. The ability to canvas like-minded users is only good if those users add additional logical arguments to the disucssion, and is not useful if they simply vote "me too". Also, allowing votes to swing one way simply because there are more members on that side will tend to promote more systemic bias, not less. --Interiot 14:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

It's an interesting assumption that such unscrupulous methods would only ever be used to redress "balance", but the underlying assumption that people have any business at all editing Wikipedia from a pro- or anti- atheist/circumcusionist/abortionist/bigendian/antidisestablishmentarian point of view is fundamentally wrong. Every single edit by every single editor must be written from a neutral stance and in the interests of Wikipedia. Organising raids on articles by one side or the other would be the death of neutrality and an end to consensus. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Your lip-service to consensus seems not really compatible with the way you've behaved in this discussion till now. I quote you from your talk page: 'what the community thinks is not important.' Larix 13:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

You misquote me slightly. "It's an encyclopedia, and those buttons threaten its identity. It doesn't matter what the community thinks, we must act in the interests of the encyclopedia at all times." There is no consensus on whether these items are fit for Wikipedia--far from it. I put the interests of the encyclopedia before those of the community, every single time, as any good wikipedian is required to. If there exists a consensus to permit destructive actions, I will still not feel obliged to permit Wikipedia to be destroyed by its community. I stand by those words and I expect you and every other Wikpedian to do the same. Otherwise this really is just another Livejournal. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:31, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

You are defending your personal interpretation of what's in the interest of Wikipedia (apparently considering yourself far above the community) and do that without any concern for consensus, thereby carelessly disturbing hundreds of userpages. Actions like these are far more dangerous then a single userbox. Besides, you keep arguing they all have categories attached but you very well know most of them don't. Larix 13:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not getting the difference between having the Advogato userbox on your userpage and having userboxes reflecting your political and religious beliefs. Neither is relevant to writing Wikipedia; both can help people with similar interests find you. For that matter (as I mentioned above) how are your Babel boxes relevant to writing Wikipedia? --Angr (tɔk) 13:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Babel boxes identify me as a native speaker of one European language, a fairly skilled speaker of another, and a basic understanding of a third. Someone wanting a rough translation of a foreign language article may look for people with such skills, and I have gone to people with such skills myself in the past when I needed them. Advogato is a community of free software specialists, people who produce most of the software, from PHP, Mysql, Mediawiki, Apache and Squid, that powers Wikipedia. Being part of that community says something about my skills and experience in such matter (though not nearly enough, since I've been in the business for 30 years). Think of it as a Project Babel for software developers. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:36, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so Advogato is directly related to WP. But as for the Babelboxes being used to find someone with language skills: someone looking for information about a religion or a political stance can use religious and political userboxes to find someone knowledgeable in those areas. I don't see any harm in the userboxes, but if the consensus is to get rid of non-Wikipedia-relevant ones, won't the Babel boxes have to go too? --Angr (tɔk) 13:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Surely we agree that it is the linked categories that are the problem, not the userboxes themselves. Therefore, removing automatic categorisation from any userbox template would resolve this issue. I really hate to bring this up, but policy proposal #4 set out this very point - categorisation should only be allowed for certain, specified areas (see proposal. Deano (Talk) 13:49, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

The Babel boxes also have linked categories. Why should a person be allowed to be in Category:User en but not Category:Religious socialist Wikipedians? --Angr (tɔk) 14:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

One is POV, the other is not. POV categories should not be bundled with userbox templates. That is crucially important. The others are useful to Wikipedia. Deano (Talk) 14:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Language boxes are not necessarily POV, but they certainly can be. If you have a user from Northern Ireland who identifies as a speaker of either Irish or Ulster Scots, that's going to be a pretty good guide to their politics the majority of the time. --Angr (tɔk) 15:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• First, the number of votes doesn't matter in AFD so much as the content of the vote. Second, if you suspect bias, just click on their signature and check for a userbox! --Mareino 15:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Copyright images and user boxes

I would suggest copyright images do not qualify as fair use when used in user boxes, and so there should be a policy against the use of such images in this way. Steve block talk 13:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Correct, they don't. Rob Church ^Talk 15:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What about templates? Someone recently removed Image:CompassRose.gif from the Anglican portion of {{user religion}}, on the grounds that it's a "non-free" image, but no one seems to mind it being on {{Anglicanism}} and {{Anglican Churches}}. (Or have I just violated WP:BEANS?) --Angr (tɔk) 15:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't rely think a policy is needed

Or at least not a seperate policy. What is allowed on a userpage should not be banned from userboxes (except for things like WP:AMT that apply to all templates for technical reasons) and conversely what is allowed in a userbox should not be something that would not be allowed on a userpages. Hence the logical thing to do is not to create a seperate policy just for userboxes, but to add a section on templates on userpages in general to WP:UP and promote it to policy if need be. WP:UP already says that if the comunity ask you to take down something you have on your userpage you should comply, so it's not like it is a complete free for all zone. WP:FU, WP:NPA, WP:NOT and WP:CIVIL all still apply and should be enforced regardles of wether the offending content is in a userbox or not. I would encourage the userbox project to try and make some checks on the creation of new templates though. Templates that only interest one or two people should be made by substring the userbox template rather than creating yet another template page to do the job. "One shot" templates should as aways be substed and deleted, or at least "userified".

On a slightly related issue I think Wikipedia:User categorisation and Wikipedia:Wikiproject userboxes should be merged or at least cooperate closesly to "police" the creation of new categories and templates for userpages. Much like Wikipedia:Wikiproject stub sorting works for stub templates and categories today. People who detest that kind of beurocracy could still be free to create and subst one shot boxes based on the "meta" userbox template, but creation of new categories and template pages should idealy go though some kind of aproval at the relevant project(s) first. --Sherool (talk) 15:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)