Wikipedia talk:Userboxes

Wording in "Using existing userboxes" and WP:NPOV

@DeaconShotFire:: Two editors, me included, have now reverted your edit. Here is the stable version:

Userboxes belong on their users' pages. In some cases, it may be considered uncivil to place userboxes on other users' pages without their permission (especially in a mean-spirited way—such as accusing a user of transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, etc.). However, userboxes may be placed on non-mainspace talk pages by anyone.

Here is your version:

Userboxes belong on their users' pages. In some cases, it may be considered uncivil to place userboxes on other users' pages without their permission, especially in a mean-spirited way. However, userboxes may be placed on non-mainspace talk pages by anyone.

I've bolded the removed content. You say the reason for that removal is per WP:NPOV. Could you be more specific as to why you think this policy applies to this page? I also ask you self-revert, as you've broken the WP:3RR policy. Isabelle ^🔔 22:13, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The content states that to accuse another user of these things is mean-spirited, which is entirely subjective. I can't imagine this sentence saying "especially in a mean-spirited way---such as offering to bake another user a cake."

Can you? DeaconShotFire (talk) 10:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@DeaconShotFire: Well, as I've explained before, WP:NPOV does not apply to the Wikipedia space in the same sense that it applies to main space. Aside from that, I don't really understand why you take issue with the part you remove ("as accusing a user of transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism") but not with "in a mean-spirited way". You agree we should not add userboxes to the page of other users in a mean-spirited way (since you did not remove this section), but you don't think doing so to call another user a bigot falls under that category? Isabelle ^🔔 11:49, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

If user A refers to user B by a racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic slur, user B would not be mean-spirited in accurately reporting that conduct for what it is. Obviously adding a user box to user A's page is not the appropriate venue for doing so, but that just highlights that all of this advice is WP:BEANS. We should say clearly that it is never appropriate to add user boxes to other users' pages, not speculate about why someone might be tempted to do so.--Trystan (talk) 18:14, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trystan: I can kinda see how this could be construed as a WP:BEANS, and I agree with you that it isn't appropriate to ever add an userbox to another user's page, although the page, as is written, does allow for that (I imagine to give leeway to editors who know each other and don't mind messing with each other's page). Maybe the sentence between parenthesis could be rewritten to be less specific? Something like: In some cases, it may be considered uncivil to place userboxes on other users' pages without their permission, especially if it could be seen as a personal attack. Isabelle ^🔔 20:10, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that is an improvement. I would still prefer something like "Do not put userboxes on other users' pages without their permission."--Trystan (talk) 23:41, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Because accusing one of bigotry being mean-spirited is subjective. DeaconShotFire (talk) 19:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Nobody should be allowed to place userboxes on another editor's userpage, without their consent. GoodDay (talk) 21:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Solution for a/an

Not sure if there's a known solution to this or not, but does anyone have a good way to toggle between a and an before a wildcard in a userbox. For example, I created User:Tcr25/Userbox/User Once Owned in response to a request at Ideas, but since the user can enter anything as something they once owned the hard-coded "a" before the wildcard sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Any thoughts for an elegant way to handle this? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 19:09, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

The rather simple solution I can think of is a parameter that only accepts either "a" or "an", that still uses "a" as default in order not to break userboxes that haven't filled the parameter. —El Millo (talk) 19:26, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

It could also be a paramater called |an= to be filled with "yes" for the 'n' to be added. —El Millo (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, El Millo, as it stands your first comment is basically what I have. A user can put anything (...|Atari, ...|Volkswagen, etc.) and it will return "a Atari" or "a Volkswagen". I'm hoping there's something I missed where I can use an if statement or something that looks at what's entered, sees if it starts with a vowel and if so uses "an" or otherwise uses "a". That's probably more complicated than is necessary for a userbox, but I was hoping it might be a problem someone had already solved. Adding an additional parameter as you suggest is probably the simplest solution; I'll give that a go. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 19:34, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Creation

Hi, am I allowed to make my own userboxes?Yodas henchman (talk) 16:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Of course, Yodas henchman! Just review WP:UBX for the guidelines about where userboxes should be created, as well as tips on how to go about it. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC: Should we delete all userboxes relating to topics covered by discretionary sanctions?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus is against this proposal. (non-admin closure) Egsan Bacon (talk) 16:58, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

---

Any topics covered by discretionary sanctions are usually divisive enough to invite vandalism. With that in mind, aren't all discretionary sanction topics divisive enough to be deleted? ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ 12:40, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Plutonical, can you give some examples of the sorts of things that you're thinking of? Not to choose a particularly thorny example, but it's what first came to mind: Arab–Israeli conflict articles are subject to discretionary sanction, so would you say that pro-Palestine or pro-Israel userboxes should be deleted? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Tcr25: I wouldn't say userboxes relating to Israel or Palestine on their own should be deleted, but userboxes promoting an opinion on one's relations with the other (e.g. "Israel should annex Palestine" or "Free Palestine") are absolutely divisive. Same goes for Post-1992 Politics of the US. It is impossible to hold an opinion on any political figure without divided responses. Same thing also goes for COVID, as some people believe the government has gone too far in its response, while others believe it hasn't gone far enough. Overall, I just think that by default, these topics fall under the divisive category, and should be able to be deleted without prejudice. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ 13:24, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Plutonical, two thoughts... First, I'd worry about how to draw a clear line as to what's promoting an opinion vs. being divisive. We already have some clear content restrictions on userboxes (WP:UBCR) and limit some sorts of userboxes to user namespace. If we're banning "divisive" out of hand, the caution at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Politics would imply that none of the political userboxes should survive such a ban. Second, sometimes the userboxes a person chooses to display can offer insight into their biases, which can be relevant when judging controversial edits. I think you need to have a more tightly defined proposal for what I think you're suggesting to be workable. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:39, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Tcr25: Arbcom draws the line for us. As for the userboxes as Userboxes/Politics, most of them would survive such a ban on account of not being directly related to the Arbcom-sanctioned "Post-1992 US Politics" topic, as many of them cover a broad range. Most of them are opinions of politics worldwide, or opinions of politics which are applied to all ranges of time, and not just the post-1992 period. Those that are probably deserve to be stricken down (I mean, have you seen the amount of Trump userboxes? I don't like the guy either, but how is all of this cruft allowed, when all it's going to do is alienate conservative editors and futher imply some sort of bias?). ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ 14:33, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Plutonical (talk · contribs), if it violates WP:UP#NOT, then that guideline should be enforced, and such userboxes have to be within user namespace, so that should be a cue that it's personal bias, not a project bias. Maybe require such userboxes to be in a personal user namespace and not User:UBX would be a reasonable requirement, but I'm not convinced a broad ban based on "divisive" is workable. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

• Absolutely not Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions is very wide reaching, for example I see nothing at all wrong with {{User WikiProject COVID-19}} - even though "all edits about" covid is a DS. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:48, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• (summoned by the bot) I think a restriction this broad is not reasonable unless we want to more or less prohibit userboxes altogether (which we could consider – some sister projects effectively do this – but I doubt it would get consensus here). I dislike controversial userboxes too, and I'm open to putting some kind of limits on them, but I think this proposal is too broad to be feasible. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:49, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• No. Come on. Among other things, this would require deleting all user-boxes related to sexuality and gender. Is the intent here that {{user male}} and {{user female}} be deleted? What about {{user LGBT}} or {{user Transsexual}}? I am not seeing any actual evidence that these templates are actually inviting vandalism as is claimed, so this seems like a solution looking for a problem; but even if there were, in many cases vandalism related to them would be people trying to prevent such userboxes from being displayed, so using that vandalism as a justification to forbid them would just be giving the vandals what they want and would encourage more such vandalism in the future for anything else vandals want to see forbidden. Would we also remove {{User from Palestine}} or {{User from Israel}}? Note that while you might say "ah, well, those are not political" there are plenty of people in (most of) those cases who would disagree, ie. people who will argue that trans identities or the Palestinian people do not exist or are at least contested and that declaring one is therefore a political act. --Aquillion (talk) 23:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Checking regarding making userboxes

I noticed that for this page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ActuallyNeverHappened02/UBX/AHK),

The guy put multiple user boxes on one page and used code to allow the user to specify which one instead of making multiple pages. Is it better to do that, or is it okay to make a page for each userbox? Which is more preferable?

Fearless lede'r (talk) 23:18, 14 April 2022 (UTC)