FreekiWiki:User page

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FreekiWiki provides users' pages to facilitate communication among participants in the project. If your username is Example:

Your user page is the page at User:Example
Your user talk page is the page at User talk:Example
Your user subpages are pages of the form User:Example/Lipsum or User talk:Example/Lipsum.
Your user space is the collection of all the above.

Details about yourself generally shouldn't go in the main namespace, which is reserved for encyclopedic content.

What can I have on my user page?

Anything that is compatible with the FreekiWiki project.

A good start is to add a little information about yourself, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, your real name, your location, information about your areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. Obviously, this will depend on how comfortable you are with respect to privacy.

You can also use your user page to help you use FreekiWiki more effectively: so you can use it to list "to do" information, work in progress, reminders, useful links, and so forth. It's also good for experimenting with markup (a personal Sandbox)

Another use is to let people know about your activities and opinions on FreekiWiki. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities on FreekiWiki, and your opinions on how certain FreekiWiki articles or policies should be changed. If you won't be editing FreekiWiki for a while, drop a note on your user page to that effect.

You might want to add quotes that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite FreekiWiki, Wikipedia articles or images, or something like that.

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

Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to FreekiWiki or You.

Do not include non-free images on your user page or on any subpage thereof. Non-free images (images uploaded to FreekiWiki without the permission of the copyright owner, or under licenses that do not permit commercial use) are permitted on FreekiWiki in articles only where their inclusion is permissible as "fair use" under copyright law. However, this argument does not apply to user pages. Non-free images found on a user page (including user talk pages) may be removed from that page without warning (and, if not used in a Wikipedia article, deleted entirely).

Note that the user pages are often reached through user signatures on talk pages.

What about user subpages?

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

Examples:

a work in progress, until it is ready to be released
archives of user talk:
tests; for testing a template, make it a separate subpage.

What should I avoid?

Generally, you should avoid any substantial content that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Examples include:

A weblog relating your non-FreekiWiki activities
Extensive discussion not related to FreekiWiki
Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages)
Communications with people uninvolved with the project

Free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a good alternative for content unrelated to Wikipedia. You might also want to consider Wikicities for wiki-style community collaboration.

The FreekiWiki community is fairly tolerant and offers fairly wide latitude in applying these guidelines to regular participants. Particularly, community-building activities that are not strictly "on topic," may be allowed, especially when initiated by committed FreekiWikins with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the FreekiWiki.

Redirecting your userpage to another page (other than your talk page or a subpage of your user page) is frowned on by some people. Doing so makes it difficult to follow links to your userpage and thus to leave you messages or to look at your contributions. The exception, of course, is if you redirect the userpage for an older account of yours to the userpage of your current account.

Ownership and editing of pages in the user space

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

Other users may edit pages in your user space, although by convention your user page will usually not be edited by others.
Community policies, including No personal attacks, apply to your user space just as they do elsewhere.
In some cases, material that does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed (see below).

In general, if you have material that you do not wish for others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for FreekiWiki, it should be placed on a personal web site. Many free and low-cost web hosting services are available to serve such needs.

Use of page protection for user pages

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

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

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

Protected pages in user space should be unprotected as soon as practical.

Removal

If the community lets you know that they'd rather you deleted some or other content from your user space, you should probably do so, at least for now - such content is only permitted with the consent of the community. After you've been here for a year or so, and written lots of great articles, the community may be more inclined to let you get away with it. Alternatively, you could move the content to another site, and link to it.

If you do not co-operate, we will eventually simply remove inappropriate content, either by editing the page (if only part of it is inappropriate), or by redirecting it to your main user page (if it is entirely inappropriate).

How do I delete my user subpages?

You can easily get any of your user subpages by replacing its content with the words "Deleat Me Please"

Alternatively, you might consider simply making the page redirect to your user page. This is normally sufficient for most people's needs.

Only label for deletion your own personal pages, and only if you have a genuine reason for requesting a personal subpage of yours be deleted.

How do I delete my user and user talk pages?

Where there is no significant abuse, and no administrative need to retain the personal information, you can request that your own user page or talk page be deleted. Most frequently, this occurs when a longterm contributor decides to leave.

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

In addition to the usual information accessible from an article page such as page history, "Discuss this page" and the like, other users at FreekiWiki can also, at the bottom of the page (or in the sidebar), click "User contributions" to see what contributions you have made at FreekiWiki over time.

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