Guild Wars Wiki:User page/Draft A

This page is currently an inactive policy modification proposal for Guild Wars Wiki:User page. (show differences) It is not being actively discussed or revised, or is not mature enough to be a policy proposal. Feel free to change this page and participate in the discussion.

Registered users in the official Guild Wars Wiki may create user pages to describe themselves to and communicate with the community. User pages help in organizing editorial tasks and foster community spirit and camaraderie.

A user's personal information or records must remain confined to their user space. You must be registered to create a user page and your user page must be named the same as your login name (otherwise it may become a candidate for deletion).

Structure

If your username is "Example", then:

• Your user page will be at User:Example.
• Your user talk page will be at User talk:Example. This is the primary method that other wiki editors will use to contact you.
• You can create user subpages under your user page, such as User:Example/Subpage. These can be used to specify additional details about yourself or manage your current projects.
• Your user space encompasses all of the above.

If you do not want a user page, please create a redirect to your talk page by adding #redirect [[User talk:YourUserName]] to your user page as a convenience to others.

Suggested content

You are encouraged to present brief personal information and content related to the Guild Wars Wiki on your user page. You might consider adding:

• Personal details such as your location, areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, or contact information (note that you can allow other users to e-mail you while still keeping it private by setting up an e-mail address in Preferences).
• Tools to help you or others use the wiki more effectively, such as task lists, advice and help for new users, or links to wiki pages you access frequently.
• Information about your activities on the Guild Wars Wiki, such as personal projects or your (constructive) opinions about certain articles and policies.
• Information about your activities in Guild Wars, such as the names of your characters, your guild affiliation, or a synopsis of your particular interests or accomplishments.
• External links, provided they follow wiki policy.
• Some reasonably-sized images (see restrictions, below) to supplement the types of content listed above.
• A licensing notice if you choose to dual-license your edits or release them into the public domain.

Bear in mind that you are not required to create a user page or provide any of the information listed above. These are merely examples of constructive things you could put on your user page.

Content restrictions

You have fairly broad leeway in creating your user page, but you should avoid content that is not relevant to Guild Wars or the Guild Wars Wiki.

These are absolutely not permitted in any form:

• Libel or defamation.
• Material patently offensive to others, including ArenaNet's competitors.
• Material in breach of the wiki's policies or the game's terms and conditions.

Common sense and general etiquette hold sway. Do not include any material generally deemed offensive and insulting. Do not include copyrighted text or images (see the image use policy) that are not licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Do not categorize pages in your user space into categories used for mainspace articles. Avoid repeatedly creating links to pages that are not meant to exist, particularly joke links, as this will lower the utility of the list of wanted pages.

User images

Uploading images for personal use in your user space is allowed, but avoid uploading multiple large images (ideally images should not exceed 100 KiB in size, depending upon their use). For example, it is acceptable to upload small images of your in-game characters, but uploading detailed galleries of each character's armor sets is not.

When uploading personal images avoid using arbitrary or generic names. All personal image names must be prefixed with the word "User" followed by your user name (for example, an image named "User Example my necromancer.jpg" is valid). The description of the image must include the {{user image}} template. Failure to adhere to these rules may result in the image being deleted without warning.

Main user page restrictions

Because your main user page is the portal for other users to contact you, additional size restrictions apply.

The combined contents of your main user page must not exceed 300 KiB in total size. This speeds up page loading and prevents any needless downloads for users who are simply trying to get to your talk page or one of your subpages.

Your entire main user page should fit into three screens of a browser window at a resolution of 1024x768 (two full downward scrolls). This is roughly two screens (one downward scroll) at a 1280x1024 resolution. See this template for a size reference. If content you wish to post to your user page exceeds these limitations, please place the excess information on a subpage or consider reformatting it. Present and maintain this information within reason, keeping in consideration what other users are most likely to find useful or interesting to read about you.

You may not attempt to circumvent this length limit by using a combination of HTML and style sheets to collapse and hide sections of your page. The fully expanded length of your page must comply to this limit. Please bear in mind that not all browsers support such special rendering and that users may choose to disallow such rendering on their browsers. If your main user page redirects to a subpage instead, that subpage must adhere to this policy as well.

User talk page restrictions

Your talk page should generally be treated like any other talk page in the wiki, even though it is part of your user space. Do not apply any special formatting to either the talk page or your comments.

As with any talk page, do not remove any comments, including your own. You may, of course, correct obvious typos, but if you wish to change your comment significantly, strike out the portions that you are changing (use <s></s>). Comments constituting personal abuse may be removed as per Guild Wars Wiki:No personal attacks.

If your talk page gets large, you may wish to archive earlier comments. Do so by copying or moving your talk page to an archive subpage, such as User talk:Example/Archive 1, and leave a prominent link to it from your main talk page. You may wish to use the {{archive-box}} template for this purpose. As a matter of courtesy, do not continue any discussion in a user's archived talk page; instead, bring discussions back to their main talk page.

Etiquette

While user pages are a fantastic way for users to explore creativity and practice with wiki code, the purpose of the Guild Wars Wiki is to document the game. Users should focus their time and dedication on Guild Wars Wiki-related contributions.

When designing the look of your user page, try to follow the common sense guidelines that apply throughout the wiki. For example, employ user friendly formatting, keep your content succinct and concise and avoid using undesirable design aspects such as garish colors or animated text. The better presented your user page is, the more people will be interested in reading it. Creativity and ingenuity are always encouraged. It is always better to make something original than to copy an existing design, and your user page may be viewed as a reflection of your personality.

When making edits to your user page or its subpages, always mark them as minor edits to allow them to be filtered from the list of recent changes. Use the 'Show preview' button to avoid doing multiple small edits to your user page, instead of saving the changes every time.

If you have information that you intend to update regularly, consider using inclusions to stop edits from popping up on other users' watchlists. For example, if you are tracking the progress of a title in an infobox and find yourself amending it daily, consider putting the infobox onto a separate page, such as "User:Yourname/Infobox" and including it into the main page as {{:User:Yourname/Infobox}}. Any edits made to this subpage will not show up to people watching your talk page, but are kept current if they view your user page. Note that any subpage inclusions still fall under the main content restrictions of this policy.

Ownership

The Guild Wars Wiki allows users to manage their own user space as they see fit within the rules and guidelines laid out above. However, users must keep the following in mind:

• User space contributions must be licensed under the GFDL, just as any other contribution in the Guild Wars Wiki.
• Other users are not prohibited from editing your user space. By convention, users will usually refrain from directly editing your user page. If you spot a problem with another user's page, leave them a comment and let them fix it themselves. Refrain even from correcting spelling and grammar on other users' pages (but feel free to point it out to them!). If you don't mind other users editing your user pages, please state so clearly on the pages themselves.
• All policies apply to your user space. In particular, no personal attacks will be tolerated in your user space or anywhere in the wiki. Content in your user space that violates policy may be removed by an administrator.