[Wikipedia-l] User pages

Mon Nov 25 17:52:38 UTC 2002

Oliver Pereira wrote:

>Hello again,
>
>I gather that it the general agreement is that the User pages are for the
>users' own use, and that it is bad manners for other Wikipedians to edit
>them. Would it be sensible to formalise this as a definitive rule - in
>fact, to make the page protected from edits by anyone but the user and the
>sysops? Anyone who wishes to address the user would still be able to on
>the associated Talk page, of course.
>
>I don't know how difficult it would be to implement technically, but I
>think it would be a good move to prevent people from vandalising other
>people's User pages, as some are doing.
>
I essentially agree with this view.  A user page is about the persona 
that an individual wants to present to the rest of the Wikipedia world. 
 If that persona includes detailed evidence to establish that the user 
is an idiot, we have no right to contradict those facts.  I would 
usually never even venture so far as to change spelling or typographical 
errors on someone's page unless there was expressed permission on the 
page.  This mostly comes from people who are not natve English speakers, 
and who appreciate corrections.

There is only one instance that comes to mind where I would make minor 
changes to somebody's user page, and that is to fix broken links or 
multiple redirects incidental to  a change somwhere else on Wikipedia. 
 Even there a piping to the correct title while retaining the appearance 
of the user page is often to be preferred.

Eclecticology