Guild Wars Wiki talk:User page/Archive 3

User pages for non-existent users
I've noticed several cases where certain users, probably out of wanting to create user pages for their friends, proceeded to create user pages for users that aren't actually registered. I think this needs to be mentioned in this policy. -- ab.er. rant  00:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think this is common sense as disallowed. But if you want to put it in the policy to clarify, I say go for it. -- Lemming64 00:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * We don't need to - it's speedy deletion material already: "U2: nonexistent user." MisterPepe talk 00:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Regardless of whether it's speedy deletion, the problem, I believe, is that these users don't realise that users won't get registered by simply creating a user page for them. And they probably don't realise it's a speedy delete, and some of them wouldn't want their effort to go to waste. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 16:37, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It's apparent alot of users have no idea there's a difference between creating a userpage and registering. A recent example is Vega Underdark, where I had big troubles making myself clear (that might just be me though) that making the user page in no way made sure that the user existed. I think this, at least, has to be explained somewhere, and why not here? And why not explain why it is a speedy deletion also, not all users go around reading all policies, and it would make our work easier and I guess we would have less angry new users. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]]  (contribs)  19:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Guild Wars Wiki:User page/Draft A
This draft has been sitting there with no objections and I would move it over but I think it requires 1. more comments and 2. someone to look over the apparent miswording mentioned above about content restrictions and suggestions.

Basically the update had some rewording and I added the new size limit we'd agreed on and there is also a note about having to be registered to create the page. - B e X  01:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It also doesn't mix up user page, main user page and user space all the time. In my opinion it is ok and ready to move over. [[Image:User_Der_moon_sig.png| ]] Der moon 12:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * No objections from me. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 21:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Left my comment on the actual talk page of the draft. --Xeeron 22:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm actually going to hold off moving it because of the comment below - do we need a section about retaining those type of comments or should it be addressed at NPA? - B e X  02:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It should be addressed here. -- Scourge  [[Image:User Scourge Spade.gif]] 03:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Added a line about removing abusive comments from you own talk page, in accordance with GWW:NPA. - B e X  05:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

(ri)Seeing as no one made any changes about the restrictions I've changed it from draft to proposed. Unless there are any major objections over the next few days I'll move it over. - B e X  14:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Copied over from the draft policy page, since the discussion seems to be here:

One very small thing; All mentions of the "main user page" should be changed to "user page" (or the definitions changed), as there really is nothing called a "main user page" according to the definitions at the top. The term "main user page" implies that "user page" is not the main page after all. It becomes unclear what kind of pages the "user page" guidelines are for when there are additional guidlines for "main user pages". For instance, is the "suggested content" supposed to be for the user page only, or also for subpages? --Lensor ( talk ) 13:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed with that. I changed several wordings in the Main user page restrictions header to make the section consistent with the header, but the header itself is inconsitent with the definition at top. I suggest dropping all mentionings of the word "main" user page alltogether and changing the rest of the article to say "user space" instead of "user page" where appropriate (e.g. in the absolutely not permitted list, which also applies to subpages). --Xeeron 13:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

End of copy.--Xeeron 16:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Harassment, Personal Attacks, and Archives
I have read the policies, but I want to be assured that what my instincts tell me to do is the correct practice here. My discussion page was vandalized today, repeatedly. Thanks to those who alerted, and to the SysOp who first warned, and then promptly implemented a ban, the person was stopped. Given the nature of the comments--which included offensive comments about sex acts and a whole bunch of other garbage--I'm not inclined to want to retain earlier comments in the same vein, nor the image link that frankly I'm just not even going to click.

My question is: Am I obliged to retain the flame comments, the image link, or neither? Once a GWW user has been banned for intentionally offensive misdeeds, can the contents of his attack be deleted? I bring this up because there are obvious "targets" here, myself being only one of many. If someone doesn't like a skill balance, can he flame Isaiah? If a player really dislikes a piece of art, can he attack Daniel or Aaron or Horia? If someone decides GW:EN isn't his piece of cake, can he verbally pummel Jeff Strain or Mike O'Brien or Patrick Wyatt? This is an interactive medium, and that's great. But for that tiny percentage who might use it for entirely unacceptable purposes, what's the policy? Do they earn a permanent place in history--via archive--no matter what they say or do?

Thanks for any insight you guys can give me. I'd be more than happy to join or contribute to a policy discussion on this sensitive issue. My background on "three sides of the fence"--as developer, journalist, and fan--may provide some insights that would be of use. --Gaile 00:08, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I would think there is absolutely nothing wrong with removing them entirely, I think you can also get a SysOP to delete revision histories as well (which I think should be done). And It's perfectly acceptable to make constructive criticism of a topic (Such as GW:EN) but "verbally pummel"ing a person violates the no personal attacks rule. -- Scourge  [[Image:User Scourge Spade.gif]] 02:19, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no strong opinion either way regarding simply removing offensive content from your talk page or archive (removing nonsense can indeed be practical, but I've also seen this get abused by users who simply don't want to keep anything that's not "Wow, you're awesome!"). For obvious personal attacks such as the ones you are suggesting, GWW:NPA already allows nuking them from orbit.
 * As for deleting revisions from article history, I'm opposed to that one. The only exceptions I'd make are dangerous information (e.g. posting someone's real name, address, phone number, their email, website or other information of the kind), and stuff that can get the wiki sued (libel or cases when copyright holders contact us to remove a piece of copyvio content even from the history). For everything else I honestly don't see a reason why we should go tampering with article histories just to hide all traces of someone going nuts. Yeah, you can say that they earn a place in history, but think about it as a Hall of Shame (who in their right mind would see those edits and that kind of childish behaviour and interpret them in any other way?). Even if you don't agree with how I feel about sterilizing history simply because we don't approve of it, maybe you'll see the practical benefit of a sysop being able to go to Special:Contributions/J.Kougar and see what he's done; in case he returns in a month and starts again with this nonsense, he'd get a longer block. --Dirigible 03:37, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well instead of deleting it is there a way to hide it from public view, and only make it viewable for SysOPS? -- Scourge  [[Image:User Scourge Spade.gif]] 03:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No need. People rarely dig through a long history. I'm also opposed to any revision deletions. And what comes to the concerns of Gaile, GWW:NPA takes care of that. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 05:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

User categories
Related discussion. I would like to be able to categorise the many subpages I have. Is this permitted? Should it be? For instance, I have a proposal in my sandbox that I made several templates for. I'd like to categorise them all so that they're easily accessible, rather than having to wade through my 3000+ page watchlist. - B e X   15:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Pages in the BeXoR namespace -- Lemming64 15:39, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Neato! Thanks! - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 15:45, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Is there a way to link that without using the full url? - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 15:48, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * You can get to the main part with Special:Prefixindex but if you don't want to put your name in each time I think you need the URL. -- Lemming64 16:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * [] works. Still, the categories would be handy even with this feature. :) - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 16:15, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Against the categories. It's easy enough without them. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 21:45, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Partial talk archiving
seems to be a partial archiving. At User_talk:Rein_Of_Terror Hank states that he does not want such partial archiving - as the only purpose seems to be to remove his (perhaps unwanted) comments. Policy does only state archiving is okay, but not how to archive. I personally think such partial archiving is same as deleting that comments from talk page - as the discussion stays on talk page, it could create another view onto this discussion. My opinion is that we should discourage such partial archivings. - MSorglos (talk|contrib) 17:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think archiving should only take place if the conversation has been dead for so many day's this could take care of the partial archiving. But if somebody has something else to say after it has been archived it can be brought back out of the archive. --Sktbrd341 18:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That behavior is the idea behind the actual user talk page policy. I don't know wether there is any policy on archiving, perhaps it is time to create on (if we don't have it) - MSorglos (talk|contrib) 18:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with MSorglos that this kind of archiving is not desirable. However, I'm not fond of restricting the archiving of a discussion based on how long it has been left alone - I believe in some cases a "speedy archiving" is needed, such as in some of the discussions at Gaile's Talk Page. I would rather limit archiving by sections - that either an entire section is archived, or none of it is, without any kind of time limit. Erasculio 18:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I support restricting archiving to sections only, not separate comments. We created the policy assuming good faith, now we have a case where it isn't working, I'd say. This should also go through normal policy change stages, right? - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 18:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any need to change the policy. This is a clear violation of the user page policy, which states "do not remove any comments". I have no problems with users who want to keep their talk page short and clear of all but the latest discussions. If they want to bother with all that frequent archiving, it's their business. It shouldn't be a problem if we go and revert that change and re-add all the removed comments right? -- ab.er. rant  04:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The user will still agrue he just archived them? Do you have a good place in the policy to point to that archiving just comments is not ok? I might just have missed one :) - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 09:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

This policy is a load of Charr Doodoo
There! I just used the expression "Charr Doodoo"! You guys probably thought I'd never use THAT again! Hah!

Ok, all these restrictions on user pages are ridiculous. Just place a restriction on the total page size in kilobytes including images and leave it at that. I for one like Vertical scrolling pages to horizontally aligned one. I think it's time this policy got serious review. Scrolling up, I see it was pushed through despite opposition, I see that a number of people over the months have said it;'s too restrictive and their voices have been hushed with excuses like "While a few LESS scrolls never hurt anyone." That's like saying you can't make more than 50k a year why because a few LESS dollars never hurt anyone.

Is there any scientific reasoning behind all these restrictions or are people just regulating based on their frustrations with certain user pages on GWiki? --Karlos 09:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * One of my main reasons is that no article in the main namespace would be allowed at that length (with a few exceptions like skill lists but they have such a huge amount of content that can't be split) so why should it be allowed in the user namespace? Any article should be user friendly and well presented. But if you would like me to dredge up all the other reasons cited by the other people since the wiki was created then I will.
 * And since the policy was made official I have only seen a handful of complaints about the scroll limit... The number of user pages that abide with the policy and look great and have fantastic content far outweight the number of complaints.- B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 09:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I can cope with the current policy, but I'm not against removing/changing the restriction. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 10:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I am against removing/changing the restriction.


 * Unfortunately things like this do need to have a limit, because there are always people that go overboard and abuse the privileges they have been given. And when I say that I am not talking about GuildWiki - before this policy was in place there were a number of pages on this wiki that were incredibly long and full of nothing.


 * While the page scroll amount is an arbitrary one, we need some sort of hard limit which is a balance between allowing a user enough room for their content (and they have subpages if they need more) and having a recorded measure that can be pointed to when an excessively long page is found. Otherwise both the offendee and the person pointing out the problem will have no way of saying what is acceptable and what isn't. Changing the limit to a different arbitrary size wont change anything for the better.


 * In any event, any article that is designed with user-friendlyness in mind is more likely to be read, so this policy should actually be benefitting those that have extremely long pages. When content is split up into more manageable or topical chunks, it becomes easier or more interesting to read. That is why the split template exists.


 * I quote ab.er.rant: "true creativity is to be able to excel regardless of constraints". - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 10:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Whilst I see that the restrictions are well, restrictive. I think it is good that it encourages users to create subpages which usually increases the quality of the userpages, makes them much friendlier to navigate, as well as forcing the user to some extent, learn some coding they wouldn't have otherwise. -- Lemming64 10:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * What is wrong with you people? Since when is the basic assumption is that a human being is born restricted, and he must strive for his freedoms? Here are a few "VERY weird" concepts you guys are treating as normal predicates under which you are operating:
 * a) That a user page is supposed to be a "user-freindly" document. Huh? Says who? It's a person's private space and they can choose to introduce themselves to the community in any way they deem appropriate. As long as they step on no one's toes, they are in the clear. What you're suggesting is like saying that all people will follow the naming convention of "Firstname ap Surname" because it;s more user friendly. We have no right to impose such a predrequisite arbitrarily.
 * b) That formatting guidelines that apply to pages (such as length) should also apply to user pages. Again... Huh? So, we should all use section headings and refrain from using TOCright? Such an assumption is invalid. User pages are for users to introduce themselves and store their own private info that they wish to store to help them around the wiki. Articles are encyclopedic references. How can we presume to govern both by the same standards?
 * c) That there is consensus on this policy. There is consensus among those who pushed for it, obviously. Bex, Gem, Aberrant and Pepe being primary proponents. However, there has been significant opposition, myself, Tanaric, Skuld and a few people up there. Tanaric's opposition has been greatly ignored. The main reason I chose to protest by disobedience is because his requests to reconsider this were completely ignored.
 * Overall, this policy needs to be rewritten with several factors in mind:
 * The user is FREE to do whatever he wants in his page.
 * We recommend that he provides a few basic pieces of infromation.
 * We demand that he does not post profanity/nudity and not flame other people or entities. In addition, we should give burueacrats or admins the right to demand removal of content if they deem it appropriate (subject to some kind of checks and balance system).
 * If we are to restrict the amount of content in the user's main page or their total user space, we need to have a guideline that is not based on Bexor's taste in what constitutes a pretty page vs an ugly page (or Aberrant's or Karlos'). The guideline on looks should really be just a guideline. The restrictions should be on total page size in KBs or something. Or maybe simply limit all images in user space to a specific size. (Do we have a means to calculate the total size of a user's space?)
 * We need to point out what happens in talk pages, and separate guidelines (like don't erase what others say to you) from rules (don't force something on another user's talk page).
 * Finally, we need to set the penalties for what happens when the rules (i.e. demands) are broken, not the guidelines. If a user posts profanity, do we delete it, do we blank his page, do we just leave a tag for a certain number of days? If a user's user space is bigger than 1 MB, do we threaten to delete it all? give them a week to cut it down in size, and if they don't we do it for them?
 * THIS would be a policy, not squabling over how long the page is in centimeters. --Karlos 12:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You are verging on violating NPA Karlos. And you are making this far too personal.


 * a) User pages are not a person's private space. Everything on this wiki is GFDL or belongs to ArenaNet. I don't think it's silly to say that any document should cater to the people that view it, whether the author or others, and that a balance should be met. There are certain limitations because of the way mediawiki is designed that should be respected by all involved.


 * b) I was not referring to specific formatting guideline, but to a basic design tenet. I did not state that articles and user pages should use the same formatting guidelines.


 * c) Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:User_page.


 * I don't believe that a user should be free to do whatever they want. It opens up huge potential for abuse. As it is, the current policy allows basically limitless freedom with some obvious content limitations and restrictions for your main page. The motivation for most of the limitations were out of courtesy to other users and to ArenaNet.


 * Limiting the total size of a person's user space is a bad idea, because many contributors use images to supplement talk page discussions or do large scaled wiki-related projects.


 * If you want to propose a revised policy, then go ahead, but right now this is reading like a big angry rant about scroll length. - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 12:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * What I can read out of this all is we have two very different views on userpages. "User pages are mainly for the user himsef" on one side, and "Userpages are mainly for the benefit of other users" on the other side. And I don't think those two views can work very well together, we need to settle for one or the other. As I do not have any strong opinion at this point, I have nothing more to say. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 13:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't believe in either of those views (I stated there should be balance). And I don't think we should settle for one or the other. We strove for a long time for a balance between opinions, and I believe we found that, got consensus and the policy was made official. Just every now and then someone comes here and complains because they've been told their page doesn't follow the policy. - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 14:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Bexor, for the records. I think the policy is good as it is, I don't think it's right for an user to ignore a policy in order to make a stand against it as opposed to just discussing it, and I don't think an administrator should be allowed to do this kind of thing. Erasculio 16:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Karlos said: "There is consensus among those who pushed for it, obviously. Bex, Gem, Aberrant and Pepe being primary proponents." Don't blaim me. If you read through all of the discussions, it didn't matter to me that much if we have such restrictions or not, I've also changed my mind multiple times. I did try to get an official policy complete as soon as possible though, but to me it wasn't relevant what these specific length etc restriction were as long as no one was campaigning against the version that we accepted. However, having seen so much disagreement in the past few weeks, I am now all for changing these restrictions. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 14:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Most of the disagreements over the past few weeks were already resolved in the latest revision of the policy. The only thing that was complained about and not changed was the scroll limit because we could not reach consensus on it. - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 14:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I honestly have no objection to changing the policy. However, the GWW:USER page is tagged as official site policy.  If someone disagrees with a policy, campaign for change - but intentionally violating policy just to make a point, to me, should not be tollerated.  Normally, I would ban someone for open defiance of wiki community policy despite multiple requests to correct the issue - however, my understanding is that sysops are not technically capable of banning other sysops (anyone know if this is correct?).  As a result, I will leave it to the b-cats to arbitrate ... this may be the first actual arbitration needed for this wiki. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I will contact the other members of the arbitration committee to discuss the issue of whether or not to accept this as a case for arbitration. --Rezyk 17:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I, for one, would certainly not be against changing the policy! I want to make my talk page looks nicer :D
 * And technically, yes the syosops are allowed to block each other, but sysops also have the ability to unblock themselves. Their sysop priveleges would have to be revoked completely if they were to be blocked, unless it was a joke block or something. Also, if a sysop is violating policy like that, they should really be put up for reconfirmation on GWW:RFA. --Santax (talk · contribs) 15:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I also don't believe there's any MediaWiki technical restrictions on sysops blocking other sysops and I know a sysop can unblock their own block, haven't tested unblock a block by another sysop though. You have my permission Barek to try to ban me for a few minutes if you want to test it out! --Xasxas256 15:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this info re: bans. And you're right about GWW:RFA ... but I've already posted on the talk pages of all three site bureaucrats re: a need for an ArbComm.  While the specific issue is not large, I believe that the broader issue of making a point by openly defying policy does merit greater scrutiny.
 * Oh, and as a test ... I'll ban Xas now for 5 minutes ... (note: I intentionally did not ban your IP, if you're unable to remove it yourself and want to post to remove the ban before the 5 minutes are up). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Errr yep, sysops can pointlessly block other sysops. I say pointlessly because they can unblock themselves and go back to vandalising stuff! :P --Xasxas256 15:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought only bcats can unblock themselves? But anyway, how Karlos chooses to protest is another issue, back to topic. I'd like to present my view on this, since I'm being viewed as a proponent for the restrictions.

My primary reason is, as BeX also mentioned, one of courtesy. To me, if there are users who dislike something about something, then I see nothing wrong with trying to accommodate or alleviate that dislike by attempting some form of compromise. Why should we not attempt to accommodate those who dislike long and slow loading user pages by limiting the main user page, yet allowing those who like huge loads of content do whatever else they want in subpages? All those subpages are, very obviously, primarily meant to feed one's ego. Nobody really cares at which point in a campaign I left my characters in.

The question most asked on this is why must you have a long page when a long subpage works just as well? The obvious answer is, "Because I want it." Fair enough I say, but then, over there, a group of users don't like it and requests that it be shortened to keep the user page relatively free of personal stuff. And then, the response would be, if you don't want to see it, don't visit! But sometimes you have to visit because it's the most convenient way of getting to that user's user space. Which is why I suggested enforcing the policy that EVERYONE must link to their talk page from their sig (to allow ppl to bypass the userpage) but it was kinda ignored.

And this comes to Anja's perfect summary. Two different views of what user pages should be. And they so very different.

Karlos, you pushing for removing the restrictions is no different from BeX pushing for restrictions. You say "says who" to her idea of a user page, but I can also easily say "says who" to your definition. There's no right or wrong for this, so I don't see why the tone is becoming so aggressive. And FYI, there has been a discussion to disallow the use of TOCright. If you say the restrictions irks some users and should be removed, isn't this the same as not having restrictions would irk other users?

As for restrictions like image size, total space size... the same argument applies, who are we to decide those? I can similarly argue that I want a 10MB image and there's nothing concrete you can say against that, because it's my user space. But of course, this is somewhat extreme and will easily find supporters against this.

One final thing is that I know there are voices of dissent. But it's not really like we pushed them away, is it? If the arguments had not stopped (at least temporarily), this policy wouldn't be official. What I'm puzzled by is why you, Karlos, did not offer a single opposing view on this if you felt so strongly about it? (I couldn't find any here or in the archive). Same with Tanaric. I'd say that doing a silent protest on his user page isn't really going to go anywhere. I really didn't appreciate being accused of pushing aside opposition and forcing this policy down the opposition's throat, and I certainly was not trying to do that. If my behavior during the formulation of this policy really gave you that impression, then I will apologise to everyone who felt I was pushing them. I was just hoping to settle it; I guess it was never really settled. -- ab.er. rant  16:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I started browsing user pages. It's awfully apparent that nobody expects a page length limit. And it's not just any user, even the user pages of several Anet employees are currently in violation of this policy. I think I'll sit on the fence for a while. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 17:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sysops can be blocked, and during that block they will not have access to editing pages or sysop tools (i.e. unblocking and deletion). MetaWiki ftw. MisterPepe talk 18:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

i agree w/ karlos that the length policy doesn't make sense. a hard size limit would deal handily w/ storage concerns while not limiting creative freedom. while i think his method of expressing his views are a bit juvenile, the principle he's fighting for is correct. -- VVong | BA 21:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Karlos (correctly) noted above that I've been one of the people pushing for restrictions on the main userpage.
 * My concern isn't only bandwidth related (storage doesn't matter in the least, and it would only matter for our relatively few dial-up users). A hard size limit doesn't really make sense, except when dealing with those two relatively minor concerns (that being said, I like having a limit on image sizes. I may have high bandwidth, but anyone's connection will slow down on pages with massive numbers of images (and I don't always access from home).
 * Other than that /second everything that Ab.er.rant just said. MisterPepe talk 22:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's get to the core of the issue
Ok, we seem to have successfully identified the core of the problem. Some people believe user pages are a "courtesy" of the wiki/Anet to the user base, others believe it is a right and a private space for each user to use as they like providing they do not infringe upon others and finally, there is Bex with the "somewhere in between."

I think we need to resolve this issue before we get into any further side discusssions. Please refrain from going into the specifics of image size vs page length and also please put the issue of my refusal to carry out the policy on my talk page or in appropriate policy talk pages. For now, let's focus on the existential question facing this policy... Are User spaces a right for users or a "courtesy" given to them by the all powerful "us"? This will define the answer to many other things.

I firmly believe that a user's space is their right on the wiki. It is their way of introducing themselves, of sorting out their work, or saving things they deem relevant. It's their "hub" on the wiki. If they choose to format it an introduction page listing age, sex and location as well as favorite hobbies, so be it. If they choose to store links to all the pages they find important, great! If they choose to make it a podium to speak against the oppression of Heket in Kourna, that's wonderful! I would like to think that the overwhelming majority of users on this wiki support this view. I would like to think that those who think it is a courtesy or a gift or some such thing are a very small minority. It is very unhealthy in my opinion to hold user pages hostage to the taste of others.

Stemming from these very basic rights, will be our policy. A policy that is BASED on the user being the owner and sole decider of his user page, will then build on that by adding LIMITATIONS as NEEDED. So, the assumption will be: Do as you like EXCEPT A, B and C. And the addition of limitations will be solely based on what's best for the wiki, such as a) assaulting other users, b) hosting material that is offensive or brings legal liability to the wiki and even c) using a color combination that a sizeable majority of the community feels that it hurts their eyes.

Content on user pages being licensed under GFDL or ANet is irrelevant in this dicussion, I don't know what is meant to be the point of those who brought it up. The user's page if it contains their own thoughts, will be licensed under GFDL and if it has ANet content then it's ANet's stuff. ANet has not taken any position on how users make their pages.

This needs to be the number one core issue to resolve. So, how many of you support Aberrant's view that it's equal pushing against restricitions and pushing for them? I find that view preplexing. It's like saying regulating people's lives in bed with their spouses and not regulating them are the same, and it's fine to be on this side of the fence or that. How is this possible? Obviously having a "you are restricted from doing anything you wat EXCEPT:" is a LOT more oppressive and uncalled for policy than "you are free to do whatever you want EXCEPT:"

Thoughts? --Karlos 22:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Admittedly you are changing my point of view on this one. Originally I thought well, 3 scrolls is quite a bit, why would you need more? Though now from a just a sort of civil rights point of view the restriction seems a little erroneous and over zealous. I do think restrictions are required to obviously prevent pages just going crazy. As you said though it is a users space, and if they make an ugly/long page that's their prerogative. What might not be in someone else's taste is irrelevant when it comes down to it. Admittedly my point seems to have been lost, but I think what I am trying to say is I agree that the scrolling limit is going over the top. -- Lemming64  22:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ANet gave us userspace to use as we will; since ANet did not once ever restrict userspace openly, why should we? Each user should be king of his userspace.
 * And that's not even going in to how silly it is to tell someone that his userpage is "too long." Are we seriously catering the entire wiki to the people with the slowest connection or lowest resolution? If ANet adopted that stance, Guild Wars would have the graphics of an N64 game and would have a max of 20 people per district. Luckily, they didn't take that stance. Now we should be smart enough to make that decision. - Auron 23:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Personally, I have no problem removing the restriction. I don't mind some wording of keeping the page to reasonable size/length (basically to protect from worse-case scenarios of pages that bog down the browser when you attempt to open them), but the limits currently in the policy can be removed - no issue.
 * My main concern here is more of the use of "civil disobedience" to make a point, rather than temporarilly adjusting to the current policy until discussion reaches agreement on the change. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have a different view from all of the "courtesy," "right," "private space", and "somewhere in-between." I may have been somewhat misrepresented here. You make it sound like people are actively working to steal a fundamental right from the userbase, and that's simply absurd. For what it's worth, I've never seen "Free Userpages" on any list of human rights, but that's not the point here. No one wants to take userpages away from the general populace. That being said, with everything in life, there are restrictions. I'm in the U.S., where we have a lot of freedoms that we take for granted. While we're free to walk the streets, we have to have clothes on while doing it. While we've got freedom of speech, nudity and language is often censored from TV shows. While there's nothing wrong with buying a house, you'll usually have to deal with a somewhat restrictive Homeowner's agreement that describes what sorts of changes you're allowed to make. I seem to have gotten a bit carried away there, so let's go to the logic:
 * I do feel that you should be able to put anything you want in your userspace (aside from obvious copyright issues/pornographic content/that sort of crap), and I've used mine accordingly.
 * My personal view on the main userpage only is that it's a resource for editors. I do not think that it's a place to show off your assorted characters, or to put whatever the hell you want. I believe that the main userpage should be a simple way to figure out who someone else is, what they do on the wiki, and just the basic sorts of things that we need to know to deal with other users. I simply do not see the point in adding huge amounts of content to a page that, when I go to look at it, is just to find out who someone is. I do not want to read about your characters or titles. Now, I know that that last sentence will be blown out of proportion in the following discussion, so I'll clarify it a bit (just to make sure people are reading the context): just because I don't want to read something, doesn't mean that it should necessarily be restricted or removed. I am not a god. Hell, at the moment, by RfA hasn't even been approved, and I'm writing this while at my very bad job. I am not being elitist here, I am not being unreasonable, and (most importantly), I am thinking things through here.
 * As far as restrictions go, in an ideal world, I'd personally like to just see a short bio and things wiki-related. Maybe a picture or two. But, of course, that's just not how things work. Currently, I see three main groups of people in this discussion: people who abhor the restrictions and want to get rid of everything, people who would like to lessen the restrictions, and people who want to keep them the way they are. On this issue, I'm not entirely sure that it's even possible to obtain consensus due to the massive range of opinions, but we're going to try anyway, damn it.
 * The thing that most people are ticked off about seems to be the length restriction. I personally like the restriction, as it's a way of keeping content down to a manageable length. As I mentioned, I think it should be an editing resource, and I don't really want to dredge through massive lists and/or essays. That being said, I understand that people don't like that, which is why I've been trying to find some point that we can all live with (even if we're not all entirely pleased about it). Quick bullet points:
 * We raised the image size restriction by quite a bit since the last revision (100kb -> 300kb at the expense of loading speed), because that particular restriction was, I'll admit, too strong. Yes, that does include the text, but the text takes up very little of that.
 * The image naming restriction makes sense from a purely administrative standpoint. It'll tick off users, but it helps the people on the back end a ton from not having to sift through images named "gw068.jpg"
 * The length restriction, I like the idea of. I'd really like to have some sort of restriction on what can be on the main page, and I really do not see any reason why things can't be moved to a subpage. I mean, seriously. Can someone explain this to me, because I really do not get it at all. That's one of the main reasons why a lot of this discussion seems silly to me.
 * Once again, I'm in favour of some sort of length or content restriction. Also once again, it's for the main user page only. I don't care at all what people do in their subpages. This, of course, comes from my personal feelings on what the user page utility was designed for, and why it was put into MediaWiki in the first place. I don't really see why other contributors should need to sift through a massive userpage to find the very small amount of information they went there to look for.
 * That being said, I understand that userpages are somewhat of a point of pride for some users, and we need to allow that. I'm fine with loosening the restrictions here (to a point), but there really should be something. A list of every character on your 17 accounts with fanfictions/biographies written about them, combined with pictures, a song and dance show, and a very small bit of useful content just isn't working for me. I know that people are going to say that I'm exaggerating horribly. And yes, I am. But there have been some very long userpages with absolutely no content at all on them (the classic example), and I'm not optimistic enough to assume that we won't get such things in the future. I'd also like mention that, during the last time this discussion resurrected, I was in favour of raising the page length limit.
 * In my opinion, there are three categories of restrictions here:
 * Administrative restictions. These include things like the image naming portion of the policy, and they help out people who do back-end cleanup, as you should know, Karlos.
 * Size restrictions. This is mainly concerning image size to help people with slower connections. Not everyone has cable/DSL/whatever - some people still use dial-up. Other people have to even access the wiki through a proxy server (though the jury's still out on whether that should be allowed - I've done this at times), which slows down even the fastest connections.
 * Content restrictions. It seems that this is where there's the most conflict, because it's basically the page length and actual content restrictions. I personally think that they're needed, but I'm more than willing to discuss where that point is.
 * I'd also like to request that someone please explain to me why they need to have so much space, and why it can't be put on a subpage. Is it just to force other users to read it, or is there another reason? I really do not get it.
 * I've now officially spent far more time on this than I had any desire to. I haven't even gotten to start testing the new User:MisterPepe/AVT build, and I started that hours ago. To give you some idea, I started writing this about two minutes after Karlos started this section. Ugh. MisterPepe talk 00:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You know, after I read the third userbox on the classic example, I stopped reading. Why didn't you do the same? &mdash;Tanaric 00:23, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Why should that be on the page at all? MisterPepe talk 00:24, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Why not? :) &mdash;Tanaric 00:27, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Your response personifies everything I see wrong with this policy. Acccording to you people who wear yellow shirts have no business riding red cars. No offense, but so what? If you read the policy it read a LOT like your thought process. That there are things that "make sense" ina user page and things that "don't make sense." This is a VERY controlling position, Pepe. I WANT to see othe rusers' chars on their user page, I'd like that to be the first thing they post. It immediately tells me how experienced they are and also how I am contact them in-game. Those are (to me) the two most important things I need to kno wabout them. There's one BIG difference between my stand and yours thoug... I am NOT lobbying for that to be the way user pages look. If I get on a user's page and they don't have that info... Oh well... Life goes on.
 * The issue is not why THEY "need" so much space. The issue is WHY do YOU "need" to limit them? A policy is a formulation of a need of the community. Why does the community NEED to tell users to adhere to a certain format? I absolutely and totally reject the notion that we can have a policy that is not "needed" but simply because a bunch of people "user pages OUGHT to look like THIS."
 * This is why I asked before and ask again: WHY are you guys even trying to limit these pages? Have there been complaints from ANet? Server load issues? Severe user excesses on user space? On GWiki (which has inferior infrastructure) it's not an issue, how can it be an issue on these servers?
 * And Pepe, I live in America too, and you are FREE to wear anything you want "except", not you wear only certain outfits that can't be longer than A and shorter than Y... That's called the military. --Karlos 00:39, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm mystified by where you get half of those points, especially that yellow shirt/red car thing. I'd just like to prove a point quickly - whenever I write a long response to something like this, it feels like half of my points get ignored, and comments are taken out of context. Case in point:
 * I do not want to read about your characters or titles. Now, I know that that last sentence will be blown out of proportion in the following discussion, so I'll clarify it a bit (just to make sure people are reading the context): just because I don't want to read something, doesn't mean that it should necessarily be restricted or removed.
 * How about that. It's almost like I knew that people were going to react to that line.


 * On a related note, I didn't write the policy (in fact, I never made a single edit to the page). The fact that it sounds like my writing would simply suggest that enough people thought along similar lines, not that I'm pushing my opinion down people's throats.


 * Dear lord, man - it feels like you didn't even read anything after the "do not want" line. I really hate writing long responses in policy discussions, as things always get skipped over. I'm certain that I went through my reasoning for each restriction and my thoughts on them. Server load and storage space were never mentioned, which means that you're rebutting a point that was never made. If you disagree with me, I'd really rather your rebuttal covered my actual position.


 * I'm not even "lobbying for that to be the way user pages look" - I said what I would ideally like them to look like, admitted that it was impossible/unreasonable, and started to try and explain what I thought about each specific restriction in the policy. Yes, I am hoping for some restrictions, but I'm somewhat flexible about what those are.


 * I'm going to go and try and figure out what's wrong with my code now. I lost another half hour due to my comments being read incorrectly. I apologize if I sound critical and bitter, but this seems to be a recurring theme. MisterPepe talk 01:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Gonna go through Pepe's bullets here...
 * We raised the image size restriction by quite a bit...
 * The first limit (100kb) was simply insane. The current limit (300kb) is slightly less insane. When we allow people to include their characters on their pages (which we should), this limit will have to be increased dramatically or removed entirely.
 * The image naming restriction makes sense...
 * Yeah, it does. Nobody's complaining about it.
 * The length restriction, I like the idea of. I'd really like to have some sort of restriction on what can be on the main page, and I really do not see any reason why things can't be moved to a subpage.
 * Your entire argument is "why not? why not move stuff to subpages?" Mine (and Karlos', Tanaric's, Skuld's, etc) is "why?" Why is that required in the first place? GuildWiki got along fine for 2 years and people had all kinds of userpages. Nobody was hurt by people's long userpages (for example, Silk Weaker), and it let them express themselves. I don't buy into that bullshit logic of "well, creativity is *really* shown when they can operate within parameters..." Yeah, that's pretty stupid tbh. Their userpages would be more creative without arbitrary restrictions than they are with said restrictions.
 * Once again, I'm in favour of some sort of length or content restriction...
 * And once again here, it does more harm than good.
 * That being said, I understand that userpages are somewhat of a point of pride for some users, and we need to allow that... A list of every character on your 17 accounts with fanfictions/biographies written about them, combined with pictures, a song and dance show, and a very small bit of useful content just isn't working for me...
 * Yeah, except for the part where userpages like that never existed, even on GuildWiki. Theorycraft is fine, but in reality, nobody has shit like that. If one user in a million makes a userpage that has 17 accounts worth of characters, it doesn't take much time for someone to register a complaint on his talk page. If said user doesn't care that people with slow connections can't load his page, it isn't our place to make him care.
 * I hope I got all your points there. I'm a fervent supporter of what Karlos described earlier; this isn't Wikipedia, and thus, we can take it on a case by case basis, instead of laying down arbitrary restrictions beforehand. - Auron 02:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I read you renitre post, Pepe. And while you placed that disclaimer, you continued to talk about how you like people who wear yellow shirts not to ride in red cars and even though you made it clear that you were not God, you still would like people with yellow shirts to ride purple cars instead. You get my drift? Your personal taste in pages is inconsequential in making policy to "restrict" user pages (as is my taste).
 * I do not think it should be our position beyond RECOMMENDING to interfere in what a user puts on his page. Placing restrictions is completely and totally arbitrary and is only used to mold other people's pages after your liking. Something I consider very unhealthy and very anti-privacy of you. I personally think that what individual members think is GOOD to have on a user page should go anywhere beyond recommendation, and that things that people here believe are bad should be put in the restrictions area coupled with a VERY good reason why it's bad for the wiki. --Karlos 08:27, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Reply to the original post fom Karlos: I think you are dividing the thoughts of users two two categories incorrectly. You say that the currect restrictive policy is starting from a point where users have no rights and that the policy gives them allowance to do some things, where as a less restrictive policy would be doing it the other way round. However, this policy has restrictions, not allowances. This means that we started from a point where everything is allowed and apply restrictions to that, just like you want us to do. The concern here is just what the restrictionss should be, not wether the user page is a right or a courtesy like you put it. We all think it's a right. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 08:39, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * My position is based on the way Bex, Aberrant and Pepe have chosen to present the reasoning behind their overly restrictive policy. Basically, that a user page should serve A, B and C functions, there fore, anything that they deem conflicts with A, B and C, they (and the policy) have deemed bad. Reading from the top:
 * Avoid content not related to GW or GWWiki. (Don't tell us Kalomeli is your girlfriend, you rambling fool!)
 * Uploading gallery iamges of your character's armor set is NOT acceptable (shortly after it said it's okay to upload images that are under 100k)
 * Present this information keeping in mind what OTHER users might find helpful or interesting (Who's user page is it?)
 * Do not use HTML to circumvent this restriction of page length (ZOMG! Why??!!!)
 * Do NOT apply any special formatting to your talk page (Again... WHY?!)
 * Do NOT remove any comments from your talk, not even your own (Gaaaah!!!!)
 * (However) OTHER users are not prohibited from editing YOUR user page (Wow.)
 * This reads (to me) like a VERY controlling policy. Here is how I would write those:
 * Try and keep content focused on GW and GWWiki, if you choose to discuss issues outside the game and the wiki be sensitive to the diversity of users in the game.
 * I would not include that...Once you set a limit on image size, you lose the right to tell the guy what images he can upload
 * Present your page in the way best represents you and what you wish to share with the rest of the wiki.
 * I would remove the entire length restriction.
 * I would remove that. Only restriction would be: "Do not put any formatting on your user page that makes it harder for people to leave you messages/interact with you.
 * Manage your talk page as you see fit. however, it is bad etiquette to simply delete other people's discussions.
 * Other users have no right to edit your userspace. Exceptions include good faithed edits to help you with your page (these should be followed with a note on your talk page to let you know) as well as removing any content that vilates policy. If you are having other users help you with your user page, have them say so in the edit summary.
 * I hope that, in reading this, you understand the fundamental difference in view that I am talking about. --Karlos 09:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Now housed in /Archive 2, I have typed 2698 words in opposition to the limits within the policy, but I eventually relented due to the draining nature of the discussion. While I don't envision me making a full scale return to the conversation, I wanted to say that Karlos' statements are like a forceful presentation of my own views, and, at this point, I have disagreed with none of what he has said about this policy. (Though I also didn't understand the shirts/cars comment in its context.) Additionally, it seems to me that most of the extended responses from both sides of the debate are being presented a lot more convincingly than previously, and, aside from any sporadic oversteppings of NPA, I am liking where this discussion has gone thus far. -- Dashface [[Image:User_Dashface.png]] 12:48, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I like all of the other suggestions from Karlos in one way or the other, but I disagree with talk page freedom. Talk pages are meant for everyone to use and they should be close enough to any other talk page on the wiki to prevent chao, misunderstandings, etc. Special formatting, removing comments, etc make dicussing things hard. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 13:10, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't have a very strong opinion on the user page limitations, except for what Gem mentioned. The user talk page, I don't mind special formatting in kind, but I don't think censoring and removing comments should be allowed. User talk should be treated as any other talk page in this matter, imo. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 13:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * In refutation of Auron's statement up there "Nobody was hurt by people's long userpages (for example, Silk Weaker)": I'd like to note that opening that user page crashed my browser. After having ~60 tabs open perfectly stable for days, that one crashed it. - Tanetris 13:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This would be the part where you go post on his talk page about it instead of imposing overly restrictive policy. He's not a wiki-vandal, he's a long-time editor that people treat with respect. Is it right to chase after him with some policy in hand like a zealot?
 * On GWiki, his case is one in a million; I had to look around awhile to find an (just one!) example. Forcing myriads of editors to follow an arbitrary policy just to stop one or two is silly... nah, it's just plain stupid. - Auron 13:43, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Nah, I don't care about his page. I'm never on GWiki anymore anyway. I'm just saying, for me at least, it wasn't exactly a great example of the harmlessness. ;) - Tanetris 14:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Since I really don't have time to fight a sisyphean battle, I'm going to give up on that third category of restrictions I talked about - those regarding "Content." I'm looking for a discussion regarding "Administrative" and "Size," though. MisterPepe talk 20:14, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

So, let's stay on the positive side of things, and keep things rolling... What do people think about rewriting those seven sentences in the way I proposed? (Please scroll up and look at the rewrites)

So far, the only complaint I have seen is that people worry about allowing users to format their talk page as they like, but isn't that addressed in saying that any formatting that is deemed to be too obstructive for average users to deal with will be removed? The other complaint is that some people do not want to allow users to delete anything from their talk pages. All edits to the user's talk page are preserved in the history of the page. Nothing is being lost. Why force them to archive if they don't want to? Are you forced to keep all the voicemail and e-mails you received all your life? No? Then why should a wiki user be forced to?

Any other issues? Are those two issues (user talk page formatting and user talk page forced archiving) blocking issues for anyone? --Karlos 20:44, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * One thing that I see periodically that anoys me ... c'mon people, close your formatting tags! Leaving tags open can mangle the normal MediaWiki navigational tools on the page.  This may be interpreted to already be addressed under permitting good-faithed edits, but a user may intentionally be wanting the appearance - so I would prefer a mention that formatting within user and user talk pages are not to alter the normal layout or display of standard MediaWiki links outside of the editable text area. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, agreed with Barek. What comes to the talk page restrictions, those are the only ones that I want to hold to, everything else is not too important to me. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 21:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

With regards to formatting that breaks the overall page layout. Agreed. We can stipulate this for all user pages or just the main page. I would be in favor of stipulating it for all user pages (to remove any assumption that doing it on purpose anywhere is ok).

With regards to the talk pages... I have reasoned some more up there and asked if they were blocking issues. Can you answer that, Gem? --Karlos 23:34, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * My 2 cents on that issue ... it comes down to a difference of opinion on if talk pages should be treated equally, regardless of if they are for an article, template, guild, or user namespace ... or if a user_talk page is more closely aligned to the user page, where the user has more control of the contents.
 * Personally, my preference would be to treat all talk pages the same regardless of the space they are in ... but I don't feel strongly enough about the issue to really care which way the policy gets re-written. However, if the user is given further control of the page, I would insist that wording be included that if the user modifies the talk page, it cannot result in broken/disjointed conversations (by removing initial posts but leaving the replies) and the user should not be permitted to make it appear that another user has posted something that they did not, including taking a statement intentionally out of context to imply the other person's post had a different meaning than initially intended. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:47, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry Karlos, I'm totally lost with the heaps of text here. Can you point me to the right direction? -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 23:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd rather that all message on user_talk pages were put in archives (like we do with all other pages). Allowing people to delete comments that they don't like or break up conversations makes discussions that much harder.
 * On the other hand, I think that Karlos phrased the bit about talk page formatting nicely. I'm fine with that. MisterPepe talk 23:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * In regards to talk page archiving - it's a blocking issue for me. One of the uses for talk pages is for warnings or other administration-related communication, and while theoretically sysops/crats can go back in the history, they should not need to just to check to see whether there is any relevant conversation to a given issue. Another issue is that unlike user pages, where we expect that the majority of contributions will be solely from that user, many (if not the majority) of contributions on a user's talk page will not be by that user, but rather by other users, who most likely would not wish to be censored. GWW:NPA already permits removing qualifying text from one's own talk page, beyond that I see no justifiable reason to delete content from a talk page rather than archive it. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 00:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Nice. That post was exactly 1k characters. Cool.
 * Anyway, Aiiane said it better than I did =P /agree MisterPepe talk 00:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I also agree with Aiiane, she put my thoughts into nice words - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 00:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * So the concensus on this is to ban all of the scared new users that are blanking their talk page out of fear and/or ignorance? (Which happens to be a great number, mind you; few editors maliciously remove content from their talk page). Unless we specifically have a three strikes (or two strikes, w/e) rule, I fear an overzealous sysop will block a user over this prematurely. - Auron 04:35, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * We've had a policy against blanking your talk page a long time now and we have yet to see a ban due to a new user blanking his talk page. :D I think it wont happen ever. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 09:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's get to the core of the issue (cont)
Ok, so just that we are clear, every one is fine with all the following rewordings EXCEPT the user talk archiving section? I am listing them here for thebenefit of Gem and anyone else who missed them: and C, they (and the policy) have deemed bad. Reading from the top: I am okay with preventing users from just wiping their talk page. However, as Auron pointed, a lot hinges on the "what if he does it" part.
 * 1) "Avoid content not related to GW or GWWiki.." changed to "Try and keep content focused on GW and GWWiki, if you choose to discuss issues outside the game and the wiki be sensitive to the diversity of users in the game."
 * 2) "Uploading gallery images of your character's armor set is NOT acceptable" removed
 * 3) "Present this information keeping in mind what OTHER users might find helpful or interesting" changed to "Present your page in the way best represents you and what you wish to share with the rest of the wiki."
 * 4) "Do not use HTML to circumvent this restriction of page length" removed along with any restriction on page length for taste reasons
 * 5) "Do NOT apply any special formatting to your talk page" changed to "Do not put any formatting on your user page that makes it harder for people to leave you messages/interact with you."
 * 6) "Do NOT remove any comments from your talk, not even your own" under debate
 * 7) "OTHER users are not prohibited from editing YOUR user page" changed to "Other users have no right to edit your userspace. Exceptions include good faithed edits to help you with your page (these should be followed with a note on your talk page to let you know) as well as removing any content that violates policy. If you are having other users help you with your user page, have them say so in the edit summary."

In the above list, there are three restrictions: The question, moving forward on those three is, what if the user does not comply? Everything else is recommendations and abandoning them just makes your page ugly/yucky/whatever. What about these three directives? What if I format my page in an arcane way that makes average wiki neophytes confused? What if I just wiped my page after a couple of users got on and told me not to mess things up? What if some guy kept jokingly editing another's page? J.Kougar editing Gaile's page? Three strikes and you're blocked? Following offenses block each?
 * Do not put formatting that makes it harder for users to edit your talk page.
 * Do not delete comments from your user page, archive them.
 * Do not edit other user's user space articles without their permission (except in good faith or enforcing policy).

Also, do we need to put in a note that if there is a dispute over whether content is offensive that it goes to ArbComm? --Karlos 06:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Hope you don't mind me breaking your most recent comments into a new section to ease replies, Karlos.


 * In regards to your question about compliance, is this really any different from any other policy on the wiki? I'd assume that someone violating the user page policy would be dealt with in the same manner as any other policy, such as if they were blanking pages (violating GWW:DP), not following GWW:NPA, or the like - essentially, dealt with at sysop discretion (whether it be removing an archaic user page if the user decides not to change it, warning and potentially blocking a user making unwanted edits to another user's userpage, et cetera) while assuming good faith. I think having a policy that people are comfortable enforcing is the key, and if that exists, the actual enforcement is rather trivial. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Responding to Auron's comment, is that not why the concept of "assuming good faith" exists? If a sysop is blocking someone prematurely, that's a problem with the sysop, not with policy. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * From your lack of mention, may we assume that you agree with the image size and image naming restrictions, then? MisterPepe talk 06:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Image policies are fine and needed. Naming is needed to identify the image more quickly and size is to prevent excesses in bandwidth and pages that take forever to load.
 * Aiiane, I would agree with you in principle, but I would add a recommendation for sysops somewhere that says "Deal with user page issues a little more lightheartedly than you would article pages." A user blanking a page two times in a row gets an instant block for 1 to 3 days in my book. A user doing that to his user talk page does not. That's my view and others might obviously disagree, but as a general directive, I think we should recommend more leniency towards user space infrigngements. --Karlos 06:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Personally, I deal with the archive thing by taking whatever comments they removed, making an archive page with them, and then explaining what I did on their talk page. There's no reason why it should go to blocking on the first offense, especially for a new user. Of course, penalties should be discussed over at Guild Wars Wiki:Blocking policy instead. MisterPepe talk 07:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with those changes and the talk page discussion is heading in the right direction imho. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 09:24, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Seconded, although I have reservations about keeping image size down... we'll see what happens with 300kb. - Auron 09:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed with the changes. I also think image size isn't really a problem, but we can argue about that later. &mdash;Tanaric 09:33, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Going to implement changes soon
Ok, everybody seems to be all happy now. I will wait till Monday because some people only access the wiki on weekdays, not weekends. So, assuming no significant opposition, a rewrite of those 6 points (keeping the restriction on user talk page deletion) will take place Monday. --Karlos 16:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Could you make a draft, and also one of those nifty diff links, that shows the differences between the two versions? That would help alot in trying to say Yes! or No.. :P - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 17:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not really sure how to do that "diff" thingie any other way, so I put the changes in then rolled them back, now we have this history diff. Check it out. --Karlos 17:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Quick thoughts:
 * No acronyms (GW/GWW)
 * Don't use the word "guideline" in a policy - that's something else
 * I hate that last section of changes - that's just not how a wiki works. It's considered bad form, but that's way more forceful than it needs to be, IMO.
 * If you set up a draft page (so other people can help with wording), someone else can set up a diff link (it's not that hard). MisterPepe talk 17:45, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I also think that Monday is pushing this ahead too quickly. Pop it up on RFC and wait a few days for comments on a draft. MisterPepe talk 17:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * (G'hah! multi-edit conflicts!)
 * Ideally, I would prefer seeing a draft to view on its own sub-page.
 * Create a sub-page of this policy, copy the current version over and save it as a baseline, then make the needed changes. A link to compare the diff between the two can be added to the top. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * See here how to set up a diff. -- [[Image:User Corrran sig.png|CoRrRan]] (CoRrRan / talk) 17:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ahhh ... very handy ... thanks Corrran. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * And with respect to point 7 of your revision Karlos: how about a mere user (me) changing userpages when I removed superfluous categories? There are too many users that don't know the exact wiki code yet and include their pages into categories where they don't belong. I would be violating this policy if I change something like that without first asking the user and putting a comment on his talk page about it. And personally I find that point 3 should still reflect that the userpage does have an informative nature to other users and that it shouldn't culminate in endless userboxes. But perhaps that's my sole opinion. I think I'm a bit of a minimalist. /waves goodbye to small informative pages. -- [[Image:User Corrran sig.png|CoRrRan]] (CoRrRan / talk) 18:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it's obvious Monday is too soon, I don't feel we have a consensus. Draft should go up and it should be put on RFC, as Pepe said. It's a quite big change, imo. Should go through the normal policy changing stages. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 18:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm, you should rethink that. If this gets implemented on monday, I will roll over in my grave, implement Guild Wars Wiki:Policy/Builds yesterday and spank Bex, Valen and Gem with a 2 headed horse wip. Which for reasons including me not being dead, graves not having internet access, general time space consistency and the question of how to divide 2 heads among 3 targets would be insanely funny to watch. Do you really want to miss out on that? --Xeeron 23:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Draft set up:

Ok, I placed a draft here: Guild Wars Wiki:User page/Draft 20070715

To address the issues raised so far:
 * The acronyms where a copy and paste error from this talk page
 * I have failed in settin up that diff, someone else go ahead and try it.
 * I disagree with the noiton that the word "guideline" has no place in a policy. Who made that absolute rule? the policy is already filled with "etiquettes" and "conventions." Guideline carries the same connotation... A recommendation, not a directive.
 * Don't know which "last section of changes" you are referring to, Pepe... And don't know why you did not hate it when it was here, I copied everything from the 7 points above.
 * Anja, the reason I aimed for Monday is to have a deadline to get people to wrap up their suggestions because everyone who is anyone (except Aberrant) in this discussion has already noted they are fine with the changes. I assumed Aberrant is not on his computer on the weekend or something. I see: Pepe, Aiiane, Gem, Tanaric, Auron all implicitly or explicitly saying they were willing to accept these changes. That seems like a lot more consensus than most of the previous changes. I removed the monday deadline for now, but I will aim to get this done by midweek. You can't possibly be implying the issue has had insufficient explosure.

--Karlos 22:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I was referring to point 7. There's a difference between the wording of something on a talk page and the way that it should be worded in a policy draft. It mainly comes down to the idea that every page on the wiki can be edited by anyone else. They are capable of doing so, but it's considered bad form (and often vandalism). Other than that, /agree with CoRrRan =P


 * A "guideline" is a different type of regulation - it's something that is not an absolute rule, and our formatting guidelines are an excellent example. After some point, those pages are brought into line with the guidelines - at least in terms of a wiki, a guideline has different connotations. Perhaps that's just me, though.


 * The reason why Monday is too soon is because, even if this "issue" has had sufficient exposure, the new proposed draft has not. Seriously, pop it up on RFC and wait a couple of days. MisterPepe talk 22:36, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * So based on that new draft are we allowing collapsible sections now? Or did I just misunderstand. -- Lemming64 22:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't really help you with text looking different on one page than the other.
 * Editing another user's space without their permission can open a whole can of worms for harrassment. For example, someone can edit your "Gwen Chan" page and start writing bios to each Gwen character and fan fiction. What are you going to do? Wiki says he can do that. Are you going to start a revert war? It's not vandalism, he's "adding" to your content... right?
 * I placed an RFC. Anything else?
 * Most importantly, Pepe... Are you backing away from your earlier statements that you were supportive of the changes?
 * Lemming, if there are no page length restrictions, then obviously using collpsable or non-collapsable HTML is irrelevant. --Karlos 22:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Supportive? When? I said that I was fine with the talk page formatting, mentioned something about the archiving issue, and asked about the image size and image naming rules. There is no statement from me saying that I supported these changes, you simply assumed that.


 * As for editing that page, it's bad form. I personally don't really care, and I'd really like us to get a handle on the numerous proposed revert-warring policies, but I'm generally apathetic to any improvements. It's bad form (as in, people don't like it when you do, and it's generally considered rude), but I don't see why it needs to be so strongly restricted. In that case, I'd most likely move the content to another page and either transfer it into his/her userspace or slap a delete tag on it. It's not blocking territory, for sure - but wording something that strongly in a policy page makes it into a block-worthy issue.


 * I also didn't say that the text looked different on one page than the other - my point was that wording needs to be clearer/more formal on a policy page, and taking the wording right out of a statement on a talk page often doesn't work. When it's on a talk page, it's an opinion - when it's on a policy page, it's wikilaw. It's like the difference between notes scribbled on a napkin and the final paper you turn in - the finished product needs to be more formally written and not have any unintended ambiguity. MisterPepe talk 23:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * That is a fair point Karlos, Basically though I wasn't sure if there was any other reason besides loading times/size that collapsibility wasn't being allowed, like compatibility with certain browsers or something. -- Lemming64 23:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Does "Other users have no right to edit your userspace." apply to user talk pages as well? If so, should we add a note that permission to post comments in talk pages is presumed unless it is explicitly stated otherwise? -- Gordon Ecker 23:54, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Never mind, the policy already says that user talk pages are treated like any other talk pages higher up. -- Gordon Ecker 00:00, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I want to echo a request for a draft copy, rather than a draft revision. If there are any additional things that need changing then they can be done to the draft and discussed. I am glad to see that the discussion has focused on the policy, rather than the people involved. :) - B e X   02:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * No opinions on the draft yet Bex? It looks like I missed a whole weekend of interesting comments and veiled (some not-so-veiled) jabs here and there. Glad you decided to affirm this later than monday. I'm not sure whether I should be commenting here or on the draft page, but since my comments tie in with previous discussions, I'd like to continue here. I don't want to stand in the way of this bulldozing exercise; I can certainly subscribe this other view. I will try to keep comments about the actual method employed to the section below.


 * As for the draft, I am against the image restrictions. The draft just about blew away every restriction that was in place. Why retain this one that's obviously in contradiction with the so-called spirit of policy? Do we have users uploading dozens of 2MB screenshots? No? So, as per the reasoning behind the length restriction, why are we arbitrarily creating restrictions where there were no problems? It does not matter if a user page loads very slowly. This is exactly the same thing as having long pages. The ticked-off user just needs to post a complaint on that user's talk page and hope enough other users are bothered enough to force the resizing of those images. Same thing about the quantity of images a user can upload and display. Personally, just replace that paragraph with a simple recommendation telling people not to go overboard with images. (this is of course, not taking into account the potential violations of the image policy)


 * The same goes for total main page size. Why? Again, make it a recommendation about etiquette and leave it at that. Since, as Auron puts it, a user is the king of their user space, they can do what they want. The draft doesn't mention what happens after a user complains about size. As it is, the offending page's user is not obligated to even respond to the complaint. Since we're to start from a point where users should first be given the freedom (and then we restrict as problems arise), is it reasonable to suggest that they be given that freedom until too many large and unwieldy user pages appear?


 * I am in the support of saying that user talk pages are to be treated like main space talk pages. No removal of comments. (I realise this is in the draft, but I'd just like to bring up my point) It gives more work for people to dig through history just to bring back a little comment made before talk-page-blanking-number-47. The same logic applies to article talk pages. If looking through history is an accepted means of seeing what was discussed before, then I'm of the opinion that it implies that all talk pages do not need archiving.


 * As for the no-editing-other-users-pages, can I suggest that a meaning of "generally disallowed" or "mostly restricted" be used in the first sentence instead? It currently sounds way too strict, despite the exceptions that follow. I have "no right" to edit. And if I did, and that user does not think my edit was in good faith... what then? Majority ruling? Consensus?


 * I can't believe how much time I've wasted going through all the discussions and formulating the responses (and I've one more to go). Oh, and feel free to move my comments if anyone thinks it should onto the draft talk page instead. Thanks. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 06:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * No opinions yet from me, because I had very little time to look over it, and then had to go out. I will read through it and put my thoughts on the draft talk page.
 * One thing that does stand out to me is that Karlos was very right about recommendations not belonging in a policy, because you cannot enforce them. This is why having arbitrary limits was decided - you can enforce a limit, whether the limit is random or not, but you cannot enforce a "suggestion". This is what I wrote earlier and then couldn't decide if I should post it yet because it might detract from discussion about the draft. If discussion about the draft goes to the draft talk page then I guess I can post it now:
 * Because this policy does not intend to enforce any sort of content formatting (apart from image size) that some kind of how to project for user pages is created with some common sense suggestions, links to things that users can use (like shared userboxes, user infobox, user page templates that people have created). This way there will be a resource for those looking for widgets (which was requested elsewhere in a different discussion) as well as ideas for presentation (i.e. recommendations about not using colours that might cause problems for colour blind people). It could also have links to the different user categories, and other resources for people looking for inspiration. And no, I'm not suggesting it be a replacement for the old content "suggestions", it can be a completely separate entity, but if people think that suggestions about length and image size are still valid concerns then they belong away from the policy.
 * The way that formatting here is not policy is a style that I think we can use in this situation. Though the mandate that formatting does not have to be adhered to, but is grounds for a revert or overhaul would not apply to user pages, just that it is a recommendation.
 * And these recommendations would not go down to a copy paste template or how to make your tables look like so and so, but just tell people what is in this draft policy: be sensitive to other users' requests, even in advance, by covering the things that people have addressed (i.e. frequent editors might want to use a subpage if they are changing minor information, keep pages short, image size down, don't go insane with the colours, don't go crazy with animated text, etc, - whatever has bothered people in the past discussions, and I'm just listing what I remember). Most people would see this and just by common sense at least follow some of it. And because it's not a policy, but a guideline, it can be ignored if you really hate it. :P
 * The policy really does need some ground rules on what can be enforced and what can't, and the things that would happen if you breach the policy, and that should be duplicated over at the blocking policy or wherever else. (I don't know if it does already cause I could only scan through). - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 07:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Ab.er.rant regarding the "no right to edit" another's userspace. I would prefer something like: Unless correcting a policy violation, users generally should not do major edits on another's userspace without their consent and should not do any edits against their wishes. Other than that, I generally like the changes. --Rezyk 07:29, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to poke my nose in here and say that I agree with the proposed changes, most of which dealing with lessening the restrictions on userpage length. A userpages is a representation of its respective owner, for obvious reasons. If it's of an annoying length, the owner of the page will be the one to receive the ill feelings, not the Guild Wars Wiki itself, and thus I feel there shouldn't be any need to enforce people to misrepresent themselves. The only way the Guild Wars Wiki itself could be negatively affected by page length is the extra space a long user page takes up on its servers, and if that were an issue then it would be better to enforce something limiting the number of characters or disk space. The size that the text takes up is minuscule, however, and so that hardly matters. Just thought I'd show my support! -- Talonz [[Image:User Talonz sig.gif]] // 03:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This section is getting very long. Let's move any discussion about the draft to the draft talk page. I'll summarise the stuff here and post one there. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 03:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Some way to resolve the discussion
Let me step forward so I can get clobbered for my proposal (I know I will). The discussion above, together with 2 archives full of more discussion points to one unfortunate fact about user page restrictions, noted before by Anja: There is no right or wrong here. Meaning no side will ever be able to prove to the other side the superiority of their prefered outcome. Instead two sets of preferences ("maximal freedom" vs "courtesy towards others") collide. Because of that I don't see us comming to consensus anytime soon. Indeed the only possible consensus is the one found before of everyone getting tired of discussion and agreeing to something they dislike simply to get the issue out of the way. With this being so, I few all this talk not as benefitial, but rather as a needed cost that has to be paid on the way to the "tired consensus". Personally, I prefer to have a vote instead. There is no right or wrong, there is no consensus likely, there are 2 sets of preferences which are in conflict - why not take a poll about which side has more support and implement the according policy?

You can start throwing stones at me now. --Xeeron 16:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * OPPOSED. &mdash;Tanaric 18:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * ::ducks:: --Xeeron 20:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * *picks up a rock*... *throws at Xeeron*... *hits Xasxas*... *slowly walks away* --Karlos 20:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The Civil Disobedience issue
I am separating this issue here. At issue are two things which I am not sure should both be discussed here or separately in other places: Again: Thoughts? --Karlos 00:29, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) What if a user refuses to comply with this policy? What is their punishment? This involves mutiple layers.
 * 2) Do the powers that be agree on the principle that this is a fiar policy or a flawed one? As an admin I tend to be more on the activist side, as such I would not punish someone for breaking a flawed and unfair policy (like I would not have deleted a page created after that silly "don't make any more pages while we sort out policy" banner).
 * 3) What course of punishment can possibly be directed at a user for refusing to shape his user page after this policy (even if yo usondier it fair)? I find it preposterous to ban people for it, even if I subscribed to it.
 * 4) What about someone breaking policy to make a point? I knew that this was a fairly harmless policy and this was in my thought process when I refused to listen to Bex. What if someone breaks NPA to make a point? Or something more egregious? Are they al equal? Does letting one slip invite others to do worse things?
 * 5) The other issue, is the fact that I am an admin. And in this regard, the issues are:
 * 6) Can an admin refuse to enforce policy on themselves to make a statement? At he heart of this issue is that I don't just see myself as an admin, but I feel a role and responsibility towards making sure the wiki adapts best practices ("best" in my view obviously). I am both an activist and an admin. And while I will not use my admin role when I am being an activist, it's there and has at times caused friction before. I don't think it is possible for me to advocate and be an activist on an issue without taking sides and passionately lobbying for my views. Obviously this sort of thing (civil disobedience) is not something I make a habit of doing. So, can an admin be an activist?
 * 7) What if an admin breaks policy? So, what if an admin admin breaks policy? Whether butting head with an annoying user page policy or something bigger like going into a revert war... What happens next?


 * If you were disrupting the wiki, I would immediately advocate your removal from the sysop position plus a substantial punitive block.


 * As it is, many (most?) userpages violate this ridiculous policy, and you did not first edit it to be garish/long and then state "I'm breaking policy, nyah nyah." Instead, it has been (slightly) longer than policy allows for some time, and you are refusing to change it. Curiously enough, any editor, under current policy, is allowed to edit your user page to fix this problem. Administrators are basically encouraged to do so. Thus, it's not really so much you breaking policy as it is you refusing to edit content that anybody else can just as easily edit.


 * Nobody banned Biro for not adding license information to his icons. Same thing applies here.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 00:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yaaay for evi lawyers. I get off the hook courtesy of my ectos that could buy evil lawyers. >:)
 * Technically, you are correct, nothing binds me to do it, and I guess I would be a bad person if I went about a revert war trying to stop someone from trimming my page. However, I am fully aware that there are those who will think I am a bad admin for being an activist. I want them to have their say, and I want the issue of the civil disobedience to be separate from the change I am pushing for now. --Karlos 01:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's within an user's right to decide that a policy is a "flawed" one so he does not have to follow it. No policy here has been made out of thin air - all are the result of a discussion, a discussion that should not be ignored just because someone did not like the resulting policy. To change one of those policies, the logical and desirable thing to do, in my opinion, is to simply discuss it - allowing someone to go against a policy just to make a point goes against that idea and opens room for a lot of negative things. Allowing an administrator to break a policy just to make a point, when said administrators should be one of the first persons to know what is the proper way to change a policy, is, in my opinion, a very bad example for the community - and if being an "activist" means being allowed to break current policies at whims, I don't think common users, much less administrators, are allowed to be "activists". Erasculio 01:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict)My thoughts from the sidelines: Although I tend to agree with you on the userpage issue, Karlos, I don't agree with how you've gone about things.True, that this has prompted discussion, but Policy is Policy, and I think distinctions between fair and unfair policy (in regards to how they should be enforced) are irrelevant. It would have been much more productive to comply with the policy (although that doesn't mean no protesting, as Tanaric did) and instead discuss the failings in a relevant place. To address specific points:
 * What about someone breaking policy to make a point? - the consequences should be the same. The fact it's to make a point means it's clear the policy is known beforehand, which makes it a tad more serious, in my mind.
 * What if an admin breaks policy? - see above. If it's a major problem, de-sysop or go in for reconformation. I'm not saying this should happen here, however.
 * In my mind, sysops should be held to higher standards than regular users. They cannot be seen disregarding consensus or policy, while at the same time enforcing it. I don't think you're a bad admin for being an activist, as you say. I just feel that you could have gone about affecting change in a much more positive manner. -- AT (talk | contribs) 01:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * My thoughts in this regard are simple: while I personally agree on the policy issue, and in this case there's very little harm done, I'm extremely against setting such a precedent of going against policy to change it, rather than the other way around. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 03:00, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I am going to echo Aiiane here, whilst it may be a small/non/insignificant infraction, going against policy to change it, and so obviously, loudly and publicly with no consequence, means you are giving precedent to someone else doing it for something much more serious. "Oh but Karlos got away with it, why shouldn't I" I can hear them saying already. -- Lemming64 06:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Not to mention, as AT said above, admins =/= users. Sure, many users do it, as abberrant said, but Karlos is an admin. Admins should try to get the policy changed, but without the drama. I would have been all for a policy change, but not for a big public demonstration. Yes, it's hardly going to bring the wiki to its knees, but what it will do if gone unchecked is make the line blurry as to what users can get away with. Rules are there for a reason... comply with them, rally to have them changed but by no means break them. Imo, Karlos should go up for reconfirmation on this, and let the users decide. And besides, you can't really go against the establishment if you are the establishment ;) --Santax (talk · contribs) 07:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * As a brief response to that last line: You CAN and you SHOULD. That, in a nutshell is my stand on all of these issues. As Tanaric pointed out, I didn't really violate any policy. I was unaware of the policy when I made my first user page. When told to remove the images and make it shorter, I did. Then I was told it still did not coincide with policy and at that point, I said I plan to do absolutely nothing about it. You know what? There is nothing even wrong with that in terms of the letter of the law. That still makes my methods questionable, but for all those saying that I "violated" policy. That's actually not true. I will not subscribe to it, and there's nothing in the present policy that says I have to edit my page at all. --Karlos 08:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * No offense Karlos, but policy is policy, this is hardly admin like behaviour. The simple fact of the matter is that if you don't like it you should propose another one and put it up for scrutiny. Until then, you should conform to the ideals you are obliged to uphold as an admin. -- Scourge  [[Image:User Scourge Spade.gif]] 08:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * But I would not uphold that policy. I will not run around with a measuring tape and measure the length of people's user pages. Sorry to disappoint. --Karlos 09:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * But what if I (just a mere user) decided to disobey the NPA policy, personally I believe in absolute freedom of speech, why should my views be suppressed on this wiki? -- Scourge  [[Image:User Scourge Spade.gif]] 09:08, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Cause you'd be infringing on others and endangering the wiki with friction between users, and legal rammifications. I would block you before you can say "koss" :P --Karlos 09:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Well if that's the case I say "Put up or Shut up" (no offense intended). -- Scourge  [[Image:User Scourge Spade.gif]] 09:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * If you don't know what the policies are, and refuse to uphold them, I don't think you deserve to be an administrator. I think Karlos should be removed from his position. Not even reconfirmation - that leaves room for this little temper tantrum to go unchecked, and it's obvious that corrective action only is not going to work (as he obviously thinks he's right). Erasculio 12:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Woah, people are taking this too seriously. :/ -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 12:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not simply a matter of his user page being too long - if anything, that's almost irrelevant here. The problem is that he did four wrong things: as an user, he broke a policy (making his page too long - ignorance is not an excuse for that). As an user, he ignored the warning that he was breaking a policy (so even claiming ignorance does not work). As an administrator, he decided to ignore a policy breach in front of his face.
 * And worse of all, what is truly despicable to me, he believes none of those things were wrong - he believes he's right and so he would be above the policies here. If we are going to have someone who thinks he's allowed to do whatever he wants, regardless of what the policies say, and that such behavior is commendable, that's the last person I would like to have as an administrator. His behavior in this page alone is inadequate - between the aggressive tone he used above, and his tentative excuses for how he acted, I don't think that's how an administator should act. Erasculio 13:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking about the benefit of the whole wiki instead of one single issue which has zero relevance. Karlos is and has always been a magnificent sysop who uses the sysop tools and his logic to benefit the whole wiki. By starting this whole thing he is also positively influencing the wiki by forcing us to discuss the policy even if the method to do so was not acceptable. I trust in Karlos and I know he only wants the best for the wiki, not for himself. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 13:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

(RI) In terms of "not breaking policy", Karlos, my thoughts are this: if you had simply left your user page as it was, the user page itself would have been out of line with policy, but you as an individual would not have been, since as has already been mentioned, failing to change a page is not really a violation, as it's not proactive. When you decided, however, to make a proactive statement about not changing it, you violated policy because of that proactive stance. Do you see what I'm getting at?

I still think that the way Karlos has gone about this is not beneficial to the wiki, and even potentially harmful due to the precedent it sets. There are established ways to initiate changes in policies, and they are sufficient. If you think a certain change decision needs attention, ping peoples' talk pages and/or put it on RfC, keep pinging the discussion page so people notice it on Recent Changes, et cetera - but setting a horrible precedent to change what is, in essence, a minor policy was a poor decision imo. However, I'll leave the decision of whether anything should be done in regards to that with ArbComm. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 13:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * First, to the point of how the break of policy should have been dealt with (at least in my view): The first line of this article, in the big box at the top states, "This page is an official policy on the Guild Wars Wiki," and the last one states, "Content in your user space that violates policy may be removed by an administrator." So here we have a simple solution: when Karlos refused to adjust his user page to fit policy after being asked, an admin could have very simply moved the excess portions of the page to a subpage. If Karlos chose to revert, that's where things get sticky, but it would at least show that admins are willing to enforce policy on other admins.
 * I also agree with the various people saying that there are better ways to make a statement than to purposely break policy, particularly for an admin, who like it or not is held to a higher standard.
 * As to the policy itself, I'm pretty much neutral, but I don't see a need to change it. What the arguement seems to be coming down to is those that feel a user page is for that user, and those that feel a user page is for everyone else. The current policy is made with the latter in mind, because a page for everyone else should be equally friendly regardless of connection speed, monitor size/resolution, browser, or processing power. For those that feel their user page is for themselves: Then what does it matter if you put it on (to use my userspace as an example) User:Tanetris or User:Tanetris/Noonewilleverseethiseverinamillionyears? You can make User:Tanetris a redirect to the talk page, or a simple text link over to User:Tanetris/NOWESTEiaMY, or even a userbox about how much you loathe the current user page policy, then make User:Tanetris/NOWESTEiaMY as huge and garish as you like, and still be well within the bounds of current policy.
 * If you want to change the policy, get it changed, but don't pretend you can't work within the current policy. - Tanetris 14:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

This whole page makes me cringe. Mostly because I totally agree with Karlos about changing the policy, but I totally disagree about disobeying it on purpose to make a point. And a little bit because there is no way all of us wading through tons of talk page comments on this (instead of doing more productive edits) is beneficial to the wiki. About the disobedience issue: I feel that it should never be allowed to willingly break policy to further one's views and I feel that admins should be held to a higher and stricter standard than normal users: With added power comes added responsibility.

Currently there is no written policy on what to do in this case. The best way to proceed in my mind is to speed up the reconfirmation (which is due any time soon anyway) of Karlos grandfathered sysop rights.

A small note on having to enforce policies: I dont feel that admins are required to enforce policies (since not enforcing is indistinguishable from not noticing, and we can blame anyone for the later), but they are required to uphold policies (that is, if they do something, it needs to be withhin the policies). --Xeeron 16:01, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I echo what you say Xeeron. It's up to sysops and bureaucrats to use their judgement on whether or not the wrong thing has been done. Our policies are not legal documents, "loopholes" may exists but there's not much red tape here either, we can use our common sense and decide if the spirit of a policy has been broken and when something disruptive to the wiki has occured. This comment Karlos wrote above:
 * ...but for all those saying that I "violated" policy. That's actually not true. I will not subscribe to it, and there's nothing in the present policy that says I have to edit my page at all.
 * Is absolute rubbish in my opinion and is the wrong stance for an admin to take. --Xasxas256 16:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Even though I disagree with violation of policy, and even though I think Karlos's current quasi-legitimate protest may be a lucky accident, I still believe that, in this particular situation, he's doing nothing wrong. He is not obligated to change his user page and make it shorter. At least, he is no more obligated than anybody else here. Any sysop stating "Karlos is failing as an administrator" is likewise failing, as you have the authority (read: the backing of policy) to change Karlos's user page yourself so it complies with current policy.


 * No administrator is obligated to enforce any policy. This is a volunteer position and we all do what we like. I don't patrol recent changes, but that doesn't make me a bad sysop. I also don't enforce user page policy, because I think it's a stupid precedent. I don't willingly violate it, but I'm not (well, I wasn't before this erupted) particularly familiar with all the ridiculous subclauses of this policy, and thus I am unable to enforce it properly anyway. Most administrators are this way -- some don't deal with image licensing issues, some avoid personal attack situations, some avoid revert wars. You do what you're comfortable with.


 * As things currently stand, the only thing Karlos is guilty of is stating his refusal to remove the information himself. We've never obligated any editor to edit anything, ever, and I don't think we should start now. If you want his user page to be shorter, by all means, shorten it. Personally, I couldn't care less.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 18:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Pretty much what I stated above, Tanaric: I don't mind changing the policy, I don't even mind people simply not enforcing it themselves, what I mind is people taking a proactive stance and saying "I'm not going to abide by policy", because I believe it encourages that wrong things. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 19:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I never "pretended" to do anything... I said I will not enfore the policy on my user page and told Bex to go the whole nine yards on this. Block me, edit my page, sue my parents... Whatever the policy says should happen. Something that until now, has yet to happen.
 * I am appalled with the few people who have protrayed this as being a fight between two reasonable points of view. That starting from the assumption that there is a set of functions that the main user page must server and confining use to that set is somehow a balanced and fair position to take. And I am wondering how all these totalitarian dictators got to be in this wiki. I consider the freedoms users have to be essential to the success of the wiki and I consider the view that the few elite active contributors who frequent policy talk pages know what's best and can choose to restrict without damages to the wiki.
 * For the last time... There is a HUGE difference in governance between RECOMMENDING and RESTRICTING. Just because it's a wiki and we're talking about user pages, not national security or the Patriot Act, that does not make the mismanagement any less egrigious. --Karlos 20:40, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This is really more belonging in the section above, rather than this one, but I think it was already stated that neither side is wanting to restrict user pages to only a specific set of purposes. Seriously, Karlos - restricting length is hardly requiring userpages to serve only a few select roles - that's somewhat along the lines of saying that because I can only drive up to a given speed limit, you're only allowing me to drive 3 places - hardly the case. While in your eyes, the opposing argument may not be "reasonable", I can see the logic behind it and I can hardly fault its reasoning - even though I, myself, do not happen to agree with it. I think you're going a bit far when you call it "totalitarian" or call those promoting it "dictators", given that it's hardly crippling, even if unreasonable or unnecessary.
 * Either way, however, I'm still curious as to why you didn't just follow established procedure for changing policy. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:48, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * "Totalitarian dictators"? Right. Karlos, you are speaking as if it's a good thing that you are defending your opinions in the way you are - and I'm sorry, but no, it isn't. This isn't a matter of "right" versus "wrong", "freedom" versus "oppression" or whatever. Take away the nonsense "yellow shirts" arguments, the WORDS in all caps you are so fond of, and the gratuitous hostility in your comments, and what is left is an user who believes himself and his opinion to be sooo good they allow him to simply ignore the community and the policies created by said community. And not even for the first time - as you so clearly stated in your talk page, your "first significant edit" on this wiki was a decision taken completely ignoring what the community was discussing at the time. You just decided you knew better, you didn't even try to listen to the other side, but instead chose to act. In a common user, that would be arrogance; but in you, someone in a position of power, that would be best described as "authoritatively prescribing conducts" - in other words, being a dictator yourself. Erasculio 00:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd rather live under Karlos' dictatorship than under one that restricts userpage policy to a point where it's barely a userpage anymore. - Auron 01:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * And I would rather be in a wiki guided by the community, one in which a long discussion is considered something "between two reasonable points of view" and people are allowed to have different opinions without being labelled "totalitarian dictators". Now, I don't know about you, but when I look up what I see written is "Guild Wars Official Wiki", not "Karlos' dictatorship". If suddenly the former became the later, please let me know. Erasculio 03:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * To be frank, Karlos knows how to run a Wiki better than most people. The admins from GWiki (and Rezyk from Wikia) were ported over because ArenaNet was impressed with how they ran things. Getting a fresh start is fine, but throwing away so much of what worked from the old wiki would be folly indeed. When I look up and see "Guild Wars Official Wiki," I think "GuildWiki's second chance," not "a wiki to be destroyed by well-meaning but flat wrong policy makers."
 * For the most part, things are going smoothly with only a few problems. The Guild: namespace is a waste of time and energy, but I'm not going to lobby against it... and GWW has no builds section, which can only be good. But one of the people's favorite things about GuildWiki was user pages. If we're arbitrarily restricting userpages after 2 years of them not hurting anyone, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
 * Back to topic, however; what is the consensus so far on punishment for breaking this ridiculous policy, and how exactly can it be "broken?" Like Tanaric said, in this case, Karlos' refusing to reduce the size of his page isn't breaking policy. What is going to be the standard course of action for this scenario? - Auron 04:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I might as well weigh into this too (penny, pound and all that). I'm mainly struck by a few things:
 * Karlos blocked Eloc for violation of policy the day before this whole thing started. Mildly ironic.
 * The line "I thikn admins need to show a certain amount of leadership and I have yet to see Gem convince me of that." from Gem's reconfirmation. Karlos has not been leading by example, and he's been purposefully inflammatory in his goal of bringing up a new policy discussion. He has the right to start a new discussion, but I don't think that he's done that in a completely constructive manner.
 * Policy states: "Content in your user space that violates policy may be removed by an administrator." No administrator did so, and that was not the right way to deal with this either. One of the sysops should have taken care of this, but no one did.
 * I was granted sysop access rights last night. That makes me an administrator, and I should go and enforce the policy as written. I would really like to, but I feel that I can't - at least if I want to have a single point I make to be respected and listened to in a discussion on this page that is already somewhat hostile to my "fanaticism" - though I liked the "zealot" line too. I'm apparently a "radical." Fight the power and all that. I'm quite conflicted at the moment, as (even with the No Big Deal concept) I feel that I should be leading by enforcing the policy, and I don't feel I can without losing validity.
 * Technically, any user could edit it, but - he's a freaking sysop. I know that I, at least, would feel bad/highly awkward editing someone else's user page (it's usually vandalism, as well) - but editing the page of someone that can block you really just seems like a bad idea (even if you were in the right to do so).
 * I guess it comes down to, for me: Karlos did not handle this situation well. When informed of the policy violation, he should have fixed it, especially considering his view of sysophood. The group of sysops did not handle the situation well, either - they should have enforced the policy. I'm not handling the situation well, due to a conflict of interests.
 * Should Karlos be punished for this? No. His handling of policy violation was only slightly worse than that of all of the other administrators on the wiki (because it was his page and he flat-out refused to comply). Ideally, Karlos would have been warned on his talk page, would have done something similar to Tanaric (a soft redirect to a subpage), and then come here to start a civil discussion about the limits and doing a scorched earth on the current policy. That didn't happen, and he's technically still violating policy - I would urge him to comply with the policy while a new one is being worked on, but punishment in this case is a silly idea. MisterPepe talk 06:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)
 * Karlos knows how to run a Wiki better than most people. - why not utilize the wiki method for changing policy, then?
 * When I look up and see "Guild Wars Official Wiki," I think "GuildWiki's second chance," not "a wiki to be destroyed by well-meaning but flat wrong policy makers." - why then, start that out with destroying one of the guiding concepts of the wiki, the policies behind it? Breaking policy to change policy is counterproductive, because what's the use of making a better policy if people are encouraged to break it? While you or I might agree about who is more qualified to decide if a policy is "right", that's not going to matter to the random Jane or Joe that decides that they think a policy isn't "right" - and while in the end things might be worked out, it's going to cause a lot of havoc in the meantime. This isn't GuildWiki. Simply because you happen to have run a wiki before doesn't mean that's the only way to run it, and the first comment I quoted above is rather telling, to me - simply because it was used on GWiki, and worked, does not mean it's the only way. I'm rather sick and tired of hearing that particular argument when formulating policy, the one of "it worked on GuildWiki, we should do it that way". We've already seen a rather substantial number of core differences in the way certain elements of this wiki vary from that one, and while I think using knowledge from other wikis is fine, that doesn't mean this wiki has to follow the same path. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe I have a moral obligation to stand for what I believe is right for the wiki. Everyone around me here is saying, I do not. I only have an obligation to enforce the rules, not challenge them. That first edit on the main page of this wiki is something I will never regret. Opposing this policy in this manner is not my shiniest moment and many will use it as an excuse to say: Look he is bad, but I did it to point attention to the core issue. The issue of policies passed that are too restrictive simply because the early active people on the wiki wanted to quickly mold the wiki into something that suits them, instead of letting the wiki grow into its own. People who brought in views from wikipedia, views that are anti-GuildWiki and so forth. People whom I believe were too selfish to trust that the wiki can grow into what IS best for it. This is what's at the core of all of this for me. There are a number of policies like that. And this is really a cry of frustration towards those policies and those people who pushed them forward.

The more I get back into how things are done the more I am surprized by these things. Some of them are things I will have to adapt to, and some are things I will fight against. Do I plan on using that methid again? Nope. Did I know what I was doing when I did it? Yes, it seemed like a pretty harmless policy to violate and a pretty effective way to point attention to the issue.

To be clear, for those who think this was about page length restriction... It is NOT about that. This is about how policies were formulated and what people had in mind when they formed those policies. This one was an easy target for me and I wanted to show everyone else how flawed the thinking was. How overly restrictive and controlling it was and how this is NOT the spirit underwhich good policies are formulated. I was not trying to make a minor edit to the policy, I was trying to change its spirit. I think I have made significant strides in that direction with a LOT of people now speaking up about how restrictive and unreasonable the language is. That is my goal. I am glad to be getting closer to it. --Karlos 06:54, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Why do you talk like following the policy and changing the policy are mutually exclusive? - Tanetris 07:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * "Everyone around me here is saying, I do not. I only have an obligation to enforce the rules, not challenge them." - hardly. Challenging policy is fine, in fact, it's necessary. It's the method in which it is challenged that is an issue. There is an established, accepted, and reasonable method for changing policy in existence, and no pressing reason to circumvent it. You speak of certain people molding the wiki to a form that suits them, but truly, what are you doing, if not the same? You speak of wanting to bring attention to an injustice, yet you've done so in such a manner that if anything has obscured that which you wish to bring to attention, because of all the flak it has kicked up via the means which you used to bring it to attention. Two wrongs do not make a right, and that's essentially what I've seen this as. If there had been a large discussion of the policy with a great deal of opposition, and still nothing had changed, I might grant you the point of necessity, but just look at the pages concerned: scroll up to the top of this page, there's almost no discussion (and very little of it opposing) involved, nor on the draft page related to this policy. In my eyes, it seems that you didn't even attempt to utilize more regular means to accomplish your goals, and that makes me exactly how many more times we're going to see double standards come into play.


 * Also, echoing Tanetris' question. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 07:03, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * This is not a case where "the ends justify the means." There is no reason whatsoever why you couldn't have temporarily followed the policy (i.e. Tanaric's soft redirect) and still brought up the discussion. People are not listening to you because of some stunt, they're participating in a discussion because that's how the wiki works. Hell, part of the reason why I fought so much there was because of the way that you handled the situation - you ignored policy and branded everyone that opposed you as a "fanatic."


 * All that you have managed to do by ignoring policy is to bring up yet another discussion that is completely unrelated to the one that you were hoping for, setting a bad precedent in the process. The idea of "I did it for the good of the wiki, I have no regrets" assumes that no one will listen to your comments in the proper form, something that quite simply isn't true. I have now had to rewrite this reply four times to comply with NPA - that's how ticked off I am by that last reply. MisterPepe talk 07:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Friend Karlos, I agree with Tanetris/Aiiane/Pepe here. I'm not sure your protest is achieving the desired goal. Consensus (wiki-wide) appeared to be shifting toward less restriction. Perhaps it was always that way -- the userspace policy was pushed through without my knowledge or supervision (which is entirely my own fault), and it seems like many others who share our viewpoints on what a userspace policy ought to be missed the discussion as well.


 * I completely agree with you on how userspace currently sucks -- I made my own userspace protest in hopes that it would spark others to do the same, or at least take notice of the issue -- but I think your more recent comments are a little... much. I don't disagree with you not editing your own userspace to comply, and I think most of the editors here would take less issue with what you're saying if you sounded less caustic.


 * To get back to Pepe's point, you're absolutely not required by any means to "handle" Karlos's userspace violation, just like the rest of us aren't. I think you do Karlos a disservice by suggesting that he would respect you less if you edited his space or blocked him for his violation. I believe he would actually respect you more if you did such a thing. If you think it's your responsibility, by all means, enforce the policy. My reasoning for not enforcing is simple -- I don't want to get roped in to enforcing it anywhere else on the wiki. It's got nothing to do with my respect for Karlos -- even if somebody I genuinely disliked were doing this, I wouldn't step in and adjust their userspace.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 08:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think there's a mistake in understanding what I am trying to communicate here. People keep thinking that I am "justifying" what I did... Let me be clear about this:
 * In NO WAY am I saying that what I did was right, or even necessary. There's no proposed martyrdom here. I stated from my very first response that the uglines of this policy as it stands is NOT justification, it is the REASON I am doing this. I am under no illusions that this was the only way to bring about change.
 * I have been saying over and over that this little revolt was MY choice (not forced into it by an oppressive society or any such thing) to point the attention of the community to a very flawed way of thinking that permeates in creating many of these policies. I chose a very harmless policy to break and I refused to enforce it on myself. My thought process was that I tried to adhere to it (and did not leave it longer than it should be on purpose), found a user (Bex) coming to my page with a measuring tape telling me I am still in violation. Found the whole thing preposterous (and most preposterous of all that level-headed users like Bex were running around enforcing THAT) and thought that enough was enough, that something had to be done to wake this community up about how draconian and oppressive the MINDSET behind such policies is. Now, do I think that was the ONLY way to bring this bigger issue to their attention? No. Do I think it was the best way? Given the circumstances... Yes, absolutely. You're all here talking about this, people are beginning to concede there is a lot of over-regulation in that policy and those who, like me, believed that over-regulation is a bit rampant over-all, are speaking now. I think that's a good thing that would not have ever, ever, come about if I had silently turned my page into a single line of text that says "Pepe is mean" or "Aberrant is using Oppressive Gaze on Karlos!" or some such thing.
 * People can choose to paint this as a spoiled brat crying to have his way, an admin who thinks he's all powerful refusing to adhere to the wiki policies or any other negative picture they want to. I believe I knew what I was doing, I think I pushed the right buttons, and I am quite happy with the result. I might lose my adminship as a result. But if what I lost was a senior janitorial position, I'm not too upset about that.
 * Finally, to Pepe's point, am I really that scary that all the admins and users on the wiki involved in this were afraid to fix my page. I think it's more that they don't want to get involved in that way. Like Tanaric, I would not have enforced it on anyone else or even checked for it. --Karlos 08:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Tanaric won't touch his userpage. I wouldn't touch his userpage. Karlos himself isn't going to touch his userpage. Why bother having a policy on this if nobody is going to act on it? Can we not even decide on a first step? If you've got an issue with Karlos, take it to his talk page; the discussion here is on the act in general and our plan for when it happens next time (...and to solve this one too, hell). - Auron 08:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Afaik, the next step now is the arbitration committee, which will probably end with Karlos either being de-sysopped or having a reconfirmation on RFA. --Santax (talk · contribs) 09:38, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I still do not believe this is an arbitration committee issue. A voluntary reconfirmation should be sufficient. &mdash;Tanaric 09:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * A voluntary resignation would be more likely. I'm amazed at how someone complaining about "unreasonable language" is getting away with calling those who made the big crime of having a different opinion "totalitarian dictators", or deciding that this entire discussion shouldn't even have happened in the first place. This isn't a matter of making the wiki better for the community - it's a matter of Karlos trying to make the wiki what he wants it to be, while ignoring, insulting and quenching those who think otherwise, while ironically pretending he's a martyr fighting against "opression". Erasculio 12:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * People aren't here because you decided to violate policy; people are here because there's activity. I came to this page because I saw a bunch of edits showing up on RecentChanges and was curious what was going on, and I'm quite certain I'm not the only one. The exact same thing would have happened if you had editted your user page down to something like Tanaric's and then started going around rallying for attention, posting on RfC, leaving notes on talk pages of those who helped form the original policy, etc. Only difference would be that the focus would actually be on the policy rather than on your actions. - Tanetris 19:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to redirect attention back to Karlos' original question regarding policy violation. I'm of the opinion that regardless of whether a policy is seen as trivial, useless, unfair, or flawed, a policy is a policy. And any violation of policy must have consequences. A so-called "harmless" policy like this would warrant some friendly heads-up and perhaps warnings. A ban may be too much for something like this (since it's not disruptive) but I propose that the offending user's page be edited to conform (not blanked). If that user reverts and ignores a subsequent warning, then a ban will follow. A ban is too strong for so trivial a thing? It isn't. It is not just banning for breaching the user page policy. It is banning for violating a policy.

As for admins breaking policy, I would say go direct to warning and then suibsequently ban. Despite sysops being generally labelled as glorified janitors, janitors need to know the rules and carry them out. If I'm told to keep a building clean, I will keep it clean according to whatever the management deems as "clean". The janitor is expected to understand what "clean" is, and should be held to higher expectations.

I think policy violation discussions and how to resolve them should be placed in GWW:ADMIN as a sort of general rule. It should be general enough to handle all policies. As for what Karlos did, I would think it more appropriate to be discussed on his talk page. -- ab.er. rant  06:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

ArbComm decision
With arbcomm policy not yet materialized, it's not clear what is the most appropriate way to present this, but here we go anyways..:

The committee has decided to decline to arbitrate this case.

Rezyk (decline): ''I would decline the case for now, based on a judgment that the community should be given an opportunity (or more time) to deal with the issue before we resort to final arbitration. This declination should not completely rule out the possibility of accepting a case for this issue, though. If/when any user wants, it may be worth making a more direct, convincing request that argues why arbcomm intervention is needed here or why the community cannot handle it. Having a sysop as the one whose behavior is in question is not an automatic justification (but if the sysop were to say, actively use sysop abilities to render the community solution ineffective, that would be a strong factor). A more formal request for arbitration would also help in case we just miss anything important; the discussions are somewhat spread over many pages, and it would be good in general to have the necessary considerations be made clear in one place.''

Dirigible (decline): ''I feel the same way, I think it's too early for this issue to be an ArbComm matter. The community (and sysops) should try handling the issue through normal procedures first, as they'd do if any user were to violate a policy. There's neither a rule nor tradition on this wiki which suggests that sysops are above the community or its decisions; they are users themselves, after all, as mentioned in GWW:RFA, "a successful RFA represents a user being trusted with access to technical features to aid in maintenance".''

LordBiro (decline): ''I agree that ArbComm intervention does not appear to be necessary at present. Karlos' "protest" is clearly a violation of policy, but, as has been said, sysops are users. Karlos has volunteered for reconfirmation, which I hope will go some way to resolving the issue.''

--Rezyk 18:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I am very pleased with this decision. &mdash;Tanaric 22:22, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

See Guild Wars Wiki talk:User page/Draft 20070715
A bump for those who are interested in seeing this policy reworked. Please voice your comments. -- ab.er. rant  06:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I intend to move this proposed policy (EDIT: "this proposed policy" being the latest version of the proposal at the time I wrote this) into this policy in 2-3 days. --Rezyk 10:53, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * If anyone does want to object, please make it clear enough (say something like "I object" in Guild Wars Wiki talk:User page/Draft 20070715) such that there is no confusion about it. --Rezyk 20:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Question on userpage content
So I'm about to start helping someone get a userpage up on the wiki. We've been discussing content, and something occurred to me. The vast majority of userpages that I have seen so far address the user's real life persona. The person I will be helping is more interested in creating an "in character" userpage. Are there any strong feelings against this sort of userpage? The etiquette section briefly touches on the purposes of a userpage, but I'm reading it to be more along the lines of "spend some time contributing to the main wiki space, rather than all of your time on your user page." Thanks for any insights. --Nkuvu 22:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * There's no reason why one couldn't have such content on a user page - tell them to go for it. As long as it doesn't violate any of the core elements of policy (most of which say nothing about actual ideological content, and are more focused on how such content is presented). :) [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Obviously the page would comply with existing policies. But as I said, it's not something I've seen on the wiki before, so wanted to make sure there weren't any strong objections prior to putting in a bit of effort to the whole thing. Thanks for the quick response, Aiiane. --Nkuvu [[Image:User_Nkuvu_sig_button.jpg]] 22:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the reason you see less of in-character userpages is because you haven't looked hard enough. The pages of the more active and regular contributors provide more info of their person because that's partially what a user page is supposed to do. You'll find that they have character pages as subpages. The less active contributors usually have character pages as their main user page. But do take a look at Guild Wars Wiki:User page/Draft 20070715 for the latest proposal for change and add your feedback if any. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 00:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Will their contributions be in character, as well? "I'm using Reversal of Fortune on this page to previous version by User:X due to vandalism!" Heh. Kind of a Scribe feel... - Thulsey  [[Image:User Thulsey good.gif|Zheng]] - talk 03:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * LOL -- Extinguishing the flames -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 06:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

User Images
Does that giant user image box have to show over all you images?The Mattster 15:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope, you just have to go to the image page, for example this one: Image:User The Mattster.jpg, press edit at the top of that page and add . The tag does not need to be anywhere else :) (On all your pictures pages though, of course) -  anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 15:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)