Wikipedia talk:Jimbo on Userboxes

I strongly agree
Templates are not really needed. --Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:54, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Exegesis
It seems to me that Jimbo is OK with userbox templates, even POV ones, in user-space, just not in Template: space or elsewhere.

I believe this is what the German Wikipedia does. &mdash;Ashley Y 08:28, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

See The German solution. &mdash;Ashley Y 00:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The German Solution seems to be a classic example of something being suppressed and going underground! Rentwa 01:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Right. It's only going to make the use of "unacceptable" userboxes proliferate.   You either have to allow them, unrestricted, or you have to make it impossible to use them.  There's no middle ground here.  The thing I see developing at  The German solution is an idea that there are some which are good (Babel boxes, professional identification boxes and the like) and some which are bad (religious and political identifiers).  Thing is, every single thing about you as a person goes into your world view and ultimately into your writing.  The idea of a neutral Wikipedian is a myth.  I would therefore argue that we should just leave things as they were.  Honestly, I bet if you compared the list of people banned from Wikipedia (truly Jimbo's "wrong sort of people") against their use of userboxes, you'd probably find little to no correlation between the two phenomena.   At least people who use userboxes are making it clear where they stand so that you can read their edits with a view toward understanding how their work might be biased. —CzechOut 23:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Extremism?
If NPOV has become so dogmatic as to ban expression of moderate political views and non-fundamentalist religious belief then it would appear to have crossed the line and become a POV itself.

If some userboxes are contentious, are Wikipedians to be regarded as not intelligent or mature enough to express their views, and co-exist with others who express different ones? Rentwa 13:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes and if someone says "this userbox is devisive" well that could be an opinion, like if someone says they do not like Bush, then you could go and say it is devisive, but as long as it doesn't say something like "Bush is a total retard" then it is ok. -PatPeter 05:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Wrong Point
jimbo said, "...they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian." Complete opposite, they give people an idea of who is behind the name/page. More Wikipedians should use user boxes and not live in a secret world. Culnacreann 14:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have moved this user's opinion here.  fetofs  Hello! 21:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Please keep the userboxes
Everyone is free to express his or opinion freely, as long as its not vandalism, direct attacks or editing user-pages other than your own. I think the userboxes should be kept but users who use them wrongly or if they are too uncivilized to be kept in the civilized world (supporting the Nazis or revering Hitler for a matter), those users should be blocked. Thank you. (Ahnaf 11:44, 15 September 2006 (UTC))


 * I agree with you, we do have free speech as to what we can put on our userpages, but some users abuse that power, and nearly flood their userpage with userboxes. That's probably why some disagree with them. There is also the images, which cost space on the drives (when they are linked to so many pages.) [wossi]

probably strike last section

 * —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Avriette (talk • contribs) 05:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

Jesus, I didn't even get a chance to sign the fucking mistake. That section can probably go, but I haven't stricken in in the off chance that somebody thinks it's useful to say "yeah, tried that idea, it didn't work." ... aa:talk 05:39, 7 December 2006 (UTC)