Wikipedia:User pages

This page is a guideline on user pages. Your user page is here. For information on how to design your user page, see Wikipedia:User page design center.

For usernames in general, see Wikipedia:Username policy. For the page on Wikipedia editors, see Wikipedia:Wikipedians.

For information on user talk pages, and talk pages in general, see Help:Talk page.

Wikipedia provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in its project to build an encyclopedia. Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal website. Your user page is about you as a Wikipedian, and pages in your user space should be used as part of your efforts to contribute to the project. In addition, there is broad agreement that you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute.

Wikipedia data structure

Namespaces
Subject namespaces		Talk namespaces
0	(Main/Article)	Talk	1
2	User	User talk	3
4	Wikipedia	Wikipedia talk	5
6	File	File talk	7
8	MediaWiki	MediaWiki talk	9
10	Template	Template talk	11
12	Help	Help talk	13
14	Category	Category talk	15
100	Portal	Portal talk	101
118	Draft	Draft talk	119
710	TimedText	TimedText talk	711
828	Module	Module talk	829
Former namespaces
108	Book	Book talk	109
442	Course	Course talk	443
444	Institution	Institution talk	445
446	Education Program	Education Program talk	447
2300	Gadget	Gadget talk	2301
2302	Gadget definition	Gadget definition talk	2303
2600	Topic		2601
Virtual namespaces
-1	Special
-2	Media
Current list (API call)

User pages and user space

If your username is Example user:

• Your user page is the page at User:Example user (or Special:Mypage)
• Your user talk page is the page at User talk:Example user (or Special:Mytalk)
• Your user subpages are pages of the form
  • User:Example user/Subpage (Special:Mypage/Name of subpage) or
  • User talk:Example user/Subpage (Special:Mytalk/Name of subpage),

  and are listed at

  • Special:Prefixindex/User:Example user/ and
  • Special:Prefixindex/User talk:Example user/.
• Your user space is the collection of all the above.

Note: "Your" in this context means associated with you, not belonging to you.

The Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk special pages will take each user to her or his own user and user talk pages, respectively. Others will not be able to find your user page using Special:Mypage, they will be able to visit it only by going to User:Example user (for the example user).

Details about you generally should not go in the main namespace, which is reserved for encyclopedic content, unless you are notable and someone else writes it.

If you would prefer not to have a user page, then it is recommended that you redirect it to your user talk page for the convenience of other editors.

What may I have on my user page?

To start with, you might include a userpage notice. The text "{{user page}}" will generate a tag which looks something like the one below. This is by no means a requirement but it can be helpful, especially for viewers new to Wikipedia who might be confused about what a personal page is doing on an encyclopedia.

Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with the Wikipedia project. It is a mistake to think of it as a homepage: Wikipedia is not a blog, webspace provider, or social networking site. Instead, think of it as a way of organizing the work that you are doing on the articles in Wikipedia, and also a way of helping other editors to understand those with whom they are working.

Some people add information about themselves as well, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, their real name, their location, information about their areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. (If you are concerned with privacy, you may not want to and are by no means required to emulate this. You should be aware that your user page may be duplicated by some of the websites that mirror Wikipedia.)

You can use your user page to help you to use Wikipedia more effectively: to list "to do" information, works in progress, reminders, useful links, and so forth. It is also good for experimenting with markup (that is, as a personal sandbox).

Another common use is to let people know about your activities on Wikipedia, and your opinions about Wikipedia. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities on Wikipedia, and your (constructive) opinions on how certain Wikipedia articles or policies should be changed. If you will not be editing Wikipedia for a while, drop a note on your user page to that effect.

You might want to add quotations that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite Wikipedia articles or images (freely licensed only—see the What may I not have on my user page? section below), or the like.

Others may also edit your user page, for instance awarding you a barnstar or leaving other images for you. In the event that your editing privileges on Wikipedia are revoked, a notice of this may be placed on your user page.

If you want to dual-license your contributions under an additional license or declare them all public domain, you may put a notice to this effect on your user page. Because of the large templates and long category names, some editors move the license templates to a subpage (see the What about user subpages? section below). Whether you include an explicit license statement or not, however, all of your edits on Wikipedia are also licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

Many users include mentions of the languages they know (see Wikipedia:Babel).

You are welcome to include a link to your personal home page, although you should not surround it with any promotional language.

Note: User pages are often reached through user signatures on talk pages.

What about user subpages?

Further information: Wikipedia:Subpages

If you need more pages, you can create subpages. More or less, you can have anything here that you might have on your user or user talk page.

Examples:

• A work in progress, until it is ready to be released. This is typically not necessary, though some people do this especially for WP:COI compliance or drafts of a page whose title is protected. See also: #Copies of other pages
• Archives of user talk
• Tests; for testing a template, make it a separate subpage.
• Sections of your user page that are big enough to require their own page, e.g. a page of awards you have received or pictures you have taken.

What may I not have on my user page?

See also the policy section Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Non-article space.

Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal website. Your user page is about you as a Wikipedian, and pages in your user space should be used as part of your efforts to contribute to the project.

In addition, there is broad agreement that you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute, or which is likely to give widespread offense (e.g. pro-pedophilia advocacy) – whether serious or trolling, it's not what user pages are for. "Wikipedia is not a soapbox" is usually interpreted as applying to user space as well as the encyclopedia itself. You do have more latitude in user space than elsewhere, but don't be inconsiderate. Extremely offensive material may be removed on sight by any editor.

Examples of unrelated content include, but are in no way limited to:

1. A weblog recording your non-Wikipedia activities
2. Extensive discussion not related to Wikipedia
3. Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages) unrelated to Wikipedia
4. Extensive personal opinions on matters unrelated to Wikipedia, wiki philosophy, collaboration, free content, the Creative Commons, etc.
5. Personal information of other persons without their consent
6. Advertising or promotion of a business, organization, or group unrelated to Wikipedia (such as purely commercial sites or referral links)
7. Extensive self-promotional material that is unrelated to your activities as a Wikipedian
8. Other non-encyclopedia related material
9. Polemical statements unrelated to Wikipedia; in particular, statements attacking or vilifying groups of editors or persons are generally considered divisive and removed, and reintroducing them is often considered disruptive.
10. Material that can be viewed as attacking other editors, including the recording of perceived flaws. The compilation of factual evidence (diffs) in user subpages, for purposes such as preparing for a dispute resolution process, is permitted provided the dispute resolution process is started in a timely manner. Users should not maintain in public view negative information on others without very good reason.
11. Games, roleplaying sessions, and other things pertaining to "entertainment" rather than "writing an encyclopedia", particularly if they involve people who are not active participants in the project. (cite as WP:UP#Games) (compare Category:Wikipedia games and Category:Wikipedia Word Association.)
12. Communications with people uninvolved with the project or related work
13. Images which you are not free to use (usually fair use images; see below)
14. Categories and templates intended for other usage, in particular those for articles and guidelines
15. User talk pages should not redirect to anything other than the talk page of an account controlled by the same user.

Again, these are examples. Please don't suggest others, as this may only encourage some users to try it out.

In general, if you have material that you do not wish others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for Wikipedia, it should be placed on a personal web site. Many free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a proper place for content unrelated to Wikipedia. For wiki-style community collaboration, you can download the MediaWiki software and install it on your own server if you want full control or use one of many online wiki farms.

The Wikipedia community is generally tolerant and offers fairly wide latitude in applying these guidelines to regular participants. Particularly, community-building activities that are not strictly "on topic" may be allowed, especially when initiated by committed Wikipedians with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the encyclopedia. But at the same time, if user page activity becomes disruptive to the community or gets in the way of the task of building an encyclopedia, it must be modified to prevent disruption.

Do not put your userpage or subpages, including work-in-progress articles, into categories used by Wikipedia articles (example: Category:1990 births). Be careful of templates and stub notices that put a work-in-progress article into categories. You can "quote" categories by adding a colon before "Category", like this: [[:Category:Bridges]]. This turns it into an ordinary link. Templates and stub notices can be turned into links to themselves by putting tl| ("tl" followed by a pipe character) in front of their names, like this: {{tl|stub}} You can also "comment out" a portion of text by placing <!-- in front of it and --> after it; this makes the parser ignore that portion of the page.

Statements of violence

Statements that advocate or condone acts of violence against any person(s) or group(s) are not allowed on user pages. This includes the mention or implication of violent acts – for example, murder or rape. It does not, however, include statements that support controversial groups or regimes that some may interpret as an encouragement of violence.

Copies of other pages

While userpages and subpages can be used as a development ground for generating new content, this space is not intended to indefinitely archive your preferred version of disputed or previously deleted content or indefinitely archive permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia. In other words, Wikipedia is not a free web host. Private copies of pages that are being used solely for long-term archival purposes may be subject to deletion.

Similarly, pages kept in userspace should not be designed to functionally substitute for articles or Wikipedia space pages. If you find that your user subpage has become as useful as a normal article or project page, consider moving it into the appropriate namespace or merging it with other similar pages already existing there. One should never create links from a mainspace article to any userpage, nor should a userspace essay be used as the primary documentation for any Wikipedia policy, guideline, practice, or concept.

Images

Do not include non-free images (copyrighted images lacking a free content license) on your user page or on any subpage thereof (this is official policy and the usual wide user page latitude does not apply, see Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria for details). Non-free images found on a user page (including user talk pages) will be removed (preferably by replacing it with a link to the image) from that page without warning (and, if not used in a Wikipedia article, deleted entirely).
There is broad consensus that you should not have any image on your userpage that would bring the project into disrepute (per Jimbo Wales), and you may be asked to remove such images.

Text which breaches copyright

The same rules for copyright apply on userpages as in article space. Text must either be non-copyright or out of copyright, otherwise only a short quote can be used. If you use text from another source on your userpage, it should still be credited to the author, whether or not it is in current copyright.

Simulated MediaWiki interfaces

The Wikipedia community strongly discourages simulating the MediaWiki interface, except on the rare occasion when it is necessary for testing purposes.

Ownership and editing of pages in the user space

As a tradition, Wikipedia offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit. However, pages in user space still do belong to the community:

• Contributions must be co-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and GNU Free documentation license, just as articles are.
• Other users and bots may edit pages in your user space, though by convention your user page will usually not be edited by others.
• Community policies, including Wikipedia:No personal attacks, apply to your user space, just as they do elsewhere. Article content policies such as WP:Original Research generally do not, though would apply should the material be moved into the namespace.
• In some cases, material that does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed (see below), as might edits from banned users.
• Wikipedia user pages are not personal homepages, and do not belong to the user. They are part of Wikipedia, and exists to make collaboration among editors easier.

In general, it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing another's user page without their permission. Some users are fine with their user pages being edited, and may even have a note to that effect. Other users may object and ask you not to edit their user pages, and it is probably sensible to respect their requests. The best option is to draw their attention to the matter on their talk page and let them edit their user page themselves if they agree on a need to do so. In some cases a more experienced editor may make a non-trivial edit to your user page, in which case that editor should leave a note on your talk page explaining why this was done. This should not be done for trivial reasons.

Removal of comments, warnings

See also: Wikipedia:Don't restore removed comments and Wikipedia:DELTALK

Policy does not prohibit users, including both registered and anonymous users, from removing comments from their own talk pages, although archiving is preferred. The removal of a warning is taken as evidence that the warning has been read by the user. Deleted warnings can still be found in the page history. Repeatedly restoring warnings does nothing but antagonize users, and can encourage further disruption; removal of template warnings is rarely an urgent or important matter, and it is often best to simply let the matter rest if other disruption stops.

Important exceptions include declined unblock requests and confirmed sockpuppetry notices (while blocks are still in effect), miscellany for deletion tags (while the discussion is in progress) and, for anonymous editors, templates in Category:Shared IP header templates. These notices and templates may be necessary in order to keep a user from gaming the system. Such templates are intended not only to communicate with the user in question, but to share important information about e.g. blocks and sockpuppetry with other users.

Users should note that restoring talk page notices and Whois templates is not a listed exception to the three-revert rule.

Use of page protection for user pages

As with article pages, user pages are occasionally the targets of vandalism, or, more rarely, edit wars. When edit wars or vandalism persist, the affected page should be protected from editing.

Most user page vandalism occurs in retaliation for a contributor's efforts to deal with vandalism. Administrators may protect their own user pages when appropriate, and are permitted to edit protected pages in user space. Sometimes a non-administrator's user page may be the target of vandalism. Such pages should be listed at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection and may then be protected by an administrator.

Note that repeatedly inserting copyrighted content on your own user page after being notified that doing so violates our policy is also considered disruptive, and may result in it being protected.

Vandalism of talk pages is less common. Usually such vandalism should merely be reverted. Blocks should be used for repeated vandalism of talk pages, where policy permits. In rare cases, protection may be used but is considered a last resort given the importance of talk page discussions to the project.

Removal of inappropriate content

If the community lets you know that they would rather you delete some content from your user space, you should consider doing so – such content is only permitted with the consent of the community. Alternatively, you could move the content to another site, and link to it.

If you do not cooperate, inappropriate content will eventually be removed, either by editing the page (if only part of it is inappropriate), or by redirecting it to your main user page (if it is entirely inappropriate).

In extreme cases, your user subpage may be deleted, following a listing on Miscellany for deletion, subject to deletion policy.

What to do if you find someone else's user page being used inappropriately

A user page being used as a personal web page may be nominated for deletion at Miscellany for deletion. A personal image may be nominated for deletion at Images and media for deletion. If you are considering nominating a user page or personal image for deletion because it appears to be used as a personal web page or a blog, please be aware that many editors will consider this a personal attack on themselves, because they may believe they own "my userpage". Be very careful not to scare a newbie away from Wikipedia, and try to assume good faith that they are merely trying to share information about themselves. Try to resolve the issue on the user's talk page first. Also note that a limited amount of personal information (perhaps a short biography) and a freely licensed (never fair use) tasteful personal photograph or two are usually allowed on a user's page in order to show the user's human side, but only if the page complies with other Wikipedia policies.

Users with most of their contribution edits outside their user space should be given more leeway in this regard than users whose edits consist solely or mostly of user space edits. And always remember that a user's user page simply being used as a personal web page is not in itself a speedy deletion criterion. User pages that go beyond this into advertising may be tagged for speedy deletion however: most of the speedy deletion criteria apply equally to user space as to main space. The only exceptions are that test edits and the re-creation of deleted material (within limits) are permitted in user space. A user's contributions that consist solely of a lone edit to their user page, per our requirements to assume good faith, should not normally be deleted unless it consists solely of spam or other inappropriate material. A user may have simply created their page as their first edit, and could return at any time. Such pages should be sent to "the miscellany for deletion", and not speedily deleted.

Adding {{noindex|visible=yes}} to any userspace page that is a source of concern will remove it from search engines and can provide a lightweight alternative to deletion, or prevent spidering during discussion. It will not affect the page for legitimate userspace purposes, and should not be used to make a point nor removed without consensus.

Creating user subpages

In most namespaces it is possible to create a subpage of a "parent" page. So if a page is called "PAGE", a subpage of "PAGE" with the name "SUBPAGE" would be located at "PAGE/SUBPAGE". It is not possible to create subpages in mainspace (where articles are located), in the Image namespace, in the Help namespace, and in a few others shown here.

User:Example/Lipsum is an example of a user subpage, named Lipsum, for user Example.

New editors and experienced Wikipedians can use subpages of their user page to develop templates and articles, test wikitext markup, and create new articles before moving them to the main Wikipedia space.

There are several common uses for user subpages:

1. To place user page-appropriate content on a separate page in order to avoid having a large user page or merely not to conspicuously display it (for example, an awards page).
2. To plan large changes to articles, new articles, or allow Wikipedians to draft graphical layout overhauls.
3. To delineate views on Wikipedia, its functioning, or behavior of Wikipedians in general.
4. To test wikimarkup or LaTeX. User pages and user subpages can be transcluded and substituted, so they behave like templates, and can be tested as such. Pages meant for arbitrary testing are called sandboxes; there is a sandbox for general testing, but not for long-term development.

How to create a user subpage

To create a subpage, first create a link on your user page that will lead to your new subpage. For example, to create a link to a subpage you want to be called "Sandbox," place the text [[/Sandbox]] on your user page and save it. This will create a red link "/Sandbox" on your user page. Follow the red link to a blank page which will contain a text editor and add content using the input frame. Finally, save the content by selecting the "Save page" button to create your new subpage. Do not forget the first forward slash in your link, or you will put the page in the main namespace as a regular article and will have to ask for speedy deletion if you save what you write.

It is possible to create a subpage of a subpage (a sub-subpage) to build a hierarchy of subpages. When doing this, you may wish to make relative links among the hierarchy. These are easier to type than absolute links and may make it easier to move a group of subpages. See m:Help:Link#Subpage feature for information about creating relative links.

If you need help creating a user subpage, you can get assistance at WP:UPH or use the helpme feature.

Create a userspace draft

Help:Userspace draft helps you create a draft in your userspace, providing a standard template and some guidance. Alternatively, the Article Wizard walks you through creating an article, and has an option to save as a userspace draft.

Deleting user pages and subpages

Deleting, or otherwise fixing, other users' userpages and subpages

Pages that are unambiguous copyright violations or attack pages or serve only to advertise or promote can be tagged for speedy deletion using a suitable speedy deletion template, such as {{db-attack}}, {{db-copyvio}} or {{db-G11}}.

If you find another user's userpage or subpage inappropriate, in part or in its entirety, it is considered polite to raise your concerns on the user's talk page before taking any action. This will allow the user to request deletion on their own. If the user is inactive, or the page appears abandoned and is uncontroversial, or if you are quite sure, remove the offending content, nicely explaining in your edit why you are doing this. If the entire page is inappropriate, consider blanking it, or redirecting the subpage to the userpage, or to the most relevant existing mainspace or project space page.

If the user disagrees with you, or there is a reason why the blanking/redirecting is not good enough, or if the issue not uncontroversial, list the page at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion by placing {{mfd}} at the top of the page, and following the instructions on the template.

Deleting your own sub pages

You can easily request the deletion of any of your user subpages by adding {{db-userreq}} to the top of the page; however, subpages of user talk pages may be subject to different requirements – see the section on deleting user talk pages, below. Only tag for deletion your own personal pages, and only if you have a genuine reason for requesting a personal subpage of yours be deleted. Alternatively, you might consider simply making the page redirect to your user page. This is normally sufficient for most people's needs. There may however be a reason for the page to be kept.

Blanking of user subpages is interpreted by some as a deletion request. If you are blanking one of your user subpages and wish the page history to be kept, it is best to leave a note to that effect on the blank page (e.g. "blanked to page history – please do not delete"). If you want a user subpage deleted, it is best to use {{db-userreq}} to specifically request it, rather than blanking the page.

Pages which have formerly been in a different namespace and moved to a subpage of the user namespace may not be deleted in this way. These must be listed either at Articles for deletion, or if they were not found originally in the article namespace, at Miscellany for deletion. On the other hand, if you would just like them to be moved back, then by all means ask at Wikipedia:Requested moves.

Deleting your user pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Right to vanish

Where there is no significant abuse and no administrative need to retain the personal information, you can request that your own user page and user subpages be deleted. This is done instead of account deletion because accounts with contributions cannot be deleted as this would allow another user to create the account, and claim authorship of those edits. It is not possible for your edits to be removed entirely; for this reason, removing the account would potentially violate copyrights by allowing for such authorship claims.

Just add to the page: {{db-userreq}}. An administrator will then delete it after checking that the page does not contain evidence of policy violations that may need to be kept. If there has been no disruptive behavior meriting the retention of that personal information, then the administrator can delete the page straight away in order to eliminate general public distribution of the history containing the information. If the deletion occurs immediately, others may request undeletion if they feel there was in fact a need to retain the page. In such a case, the page should be undeleted and listed on Miscellany for deletion for a period of five days following the deletion of the user page. If a user page was deleted because a contributor left, it may be restored by an administrator if the contributor returns, particularly if the history contains evidence of policy violations.

Users who have left Wikipedia may be added to Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians.

Deleting your user talk pages

See also: Help:Archiving a talk page and Wikipedia:BLANKING

As a matter of practice, user talk pages are generally not deleted, barring legal threats or other grievous violations that have to be removed for legal reasons; however, exceptions to this can be and are made on occasion for good reason (see WP:Right to vanish). Archives of user talk pages created by using page moves are also generally not deleted. In addition, nonpublic personal information and potentially libelous information posted to your talk page may be removed by making a request for oversight.

What other information is accessible to others from my user page?

In addition to the usual information accessible from an article page such as page history, "Discuss this page" and the like, other users at Wikipedia can also click "User contributions" (in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page) to see what contributions you have made at Wikipedia over time. See MediaWiki User's Guide: User contributions page for more. Please note that having your user page deleted does not delete this list of your contributions.

Visitors to your user page can also click "E-mail this user" if you have opted in your user preferences to be able to send and receive email. See Wikipedia:Emailing users.

See also

• Category:Wikipedians
• Wikipedia:How to use your user space
• Wikipedia:On privacy, confidentiality and discretion
• Wikipedia:User page design center
• Wikipedia:Userfication