Wikipedia:Userbox migration

The German solution to the userbox controversy is to put userboxes in user space.

No new policy is needed to do this, and this is not a policy proposal. Just go ahead and do it.

General features

Some general features per "How it is done in the German Wikipedia" are listed below. Please add other descriptive statements of German userbox features that apply.

• Almost no "userboxes" in the template (in German, Vorlage) space, except for the standard "This user speaks XYZ" boxes and similar.
• All POV, interest, etc. boxes are part of the userspace - distributed amongst various userpages.
• Since they are inside the userspace they are allowed to be POV, controversial, or whatever.
• Any user may use these boxes on his or her page.

Jimbo says

May 27, 2006 The middle ground is to let people do as they will in the user space, and merely use reason and argument to teach people over time why one ought not use Wikipedia userpages for political or other campaigns.... while at the same time saying, no, really, the template namespace is not for that, that we do not endorse this behavior. This is the solution that the Germans have put into effect with great results.

==A hopefully constructive modification==

March 17 2006

It seems that the separate namespace issue won't fly. And I think that's right because I think it fails to address the heart of the matter, which is whether or not official wikipedia pages and/or namespaces ought to encourage factionalism.

But it seems that the namespace proposal goes a bit further than what you need to achieve what you want to achieve. Let me quote you on something: "The text of WP:UPP is filled with what one can and cannot say, specifically, All userbox templates that show a POV or are not directly related to wikipedia will be deleted after a period of time. Note that a user subpage that is transcluded without substitution by multiple users is considered a 'template'. This is like saying, "You may have pamphlets, but you may not mechanically print and distribute them. This is not an infringement of free speech". To put it kindly, this is counter-intuitive."

Suppose we omit the bit about user subpages transcluded without substitution? If we do that, then a certain amount of userboxing can go on no problem, but outside the officially sanctioned spaces. This respects our long tradition of allowing wide latitude on userspace stuff, while at the same time keeping these userboxes out of officially sanctioned areas which would suggest to new users that this is an official thing that one ought to be doing. There would still be restrictions on the range of possible userboxes, of course, but this is not different from the restriction on all manner of things people might put on their userpages already.

(see also WP:JOU)

Other discussions

• Wikipedia talk:T1 and T2 debates#The German solution
• Wikipedia talk:May Userbox policy poll#How it is done in the German Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Mackensen's Proposal/Straw Poll#Question 9: New Userbox virtual space
• Wikipedia:Userbox policy poll
• Wikipedia:Userfying userboxes
• Wikipedia talk:Userboxes#Moving userboxes from Template space to User space
• Wikipedia talk:Userboxes#The StuffOfInterest draft
• Wikipedia talk:Userboxes#User:Userboxes
• Wikipedia talk:May Userbox policy poll#Boldly going forward (cuz I can't find the reverse)
• User:Userboxes
• User:Boxes