User pages

Offline MediaWiki Code Editor

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User Pages & User Talk Pages

User pages are administration pages in the User and User talk namespaces, and are useful for organizing and aiding the work users do on Wikipedia, and facilitating interaction and sharing between users. User pages are mainly for interpersonal discussion, notices, testing and drafts (see: Sandboxes), and, if desired, limited autobiographical and personal content.

User pages are available to Wikipedia users personally for purposes compatible with the Wikipedia project and acceptable to the community; Wikipedia is not a blog, webspace provider, or social networking site. Wikipedia policies concerning the content of pages can and generally do apply to user pages, and users must observe these policies. Users believed to be in violation of these policies should first be advised on their talk page using {{subst:uw-userpage}} when immediate action is not otherwise necessary.

Your user page has a name like this: User:Example. (This link is to yours.) Its normal use is to give basic information, if you wish, about yourself or your Wikimedia-related activities. You don't have to say anything about yourself. If you prefer to put nothing here, then you can redirect it to your user talk page for the convenience of other editors. You may also wish to create a global user page that will display on all Wikimedia projects where you have not created a local user page.

What may I have in my user pages?

There is no fixed use for user pages, except that usually one's user page has something about oneself, and one's talk page is used for messaging. Provided other users can quickly and easily find the pages they need, users may, within reason, freely organize their user pages as they choose.

Users may include a user page notice on their own user pages, user talk pages, or both. Placing the template {{User page}} at the start of a user page clearly identifies the nature of the page for readers, and also helps if people find the labeled page in copies of Wikipedia elsewhere (more about this below) and want to locate the original.

Contributions can also be given a wider license – for example releasing them into the public domain or multi-licensing them – by putting a notice to this effect on one's user page, or on a subpage linked from it. Note that it is not possible to give them narrower licensing: all edits on Wikipedia, including all userspace edits, are licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and in most cases the GNU Free Documentation License as part of Wikipedia.

User pages may be mirrored by other sites. If there is material you do not want copied, reposted, or reused, do not post it on the site.

Besides communication, other legitimate uses of user space include (but are not limited to):

· Significant editing disclosures (voluntary but recommended)

· Notes related to your Wikipedia work and activities

· Work in progress or material that you may come back to in future (usually on subpages)

· Useful links, tools, and scripts

· Personal writings suitable within the Wikipedia community

· Experimentation (usually on subpages)

· Limited autobiographical content

· A small and proportionate amount of suitable unrelated material

You are also welcome to include a simple link to your personal home page, although you should not surround it with any promotional language. However, if a link to your home page is the only thing on your userpage, this may be seen as an attempt at self- promotion.

User pages are also used for administrative purposes, to make users aware of blocks, warnings, or other sanctions if they happen, and to notify of matters that may affect articles you have worked on or editorial issues you have been involved with. Others may also edit your user pages, for instance awarding you a barnstar or leaving notes and images for you, or adding comments and questions. Although you have wide leeway to edit your user pages, a few of these matters should not be removed (see below).

Personal material

Some people add personal information such as contact details (email, instant messaging, etc.), a photograph, their real name, their location, information about their areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, etc. Once added this information is unlikely to ever become private again. It could be copied elsewhere or even used to harass you in the future. You are cautioned to think carefully before adding non-public information to your user page because you are unlikely to be able to retract it later, even if you change your mind.

Userboxes

Userboxes are fun little boxes you can put in your user page to express yourself.

What may I not have in my user pages?

Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal website. Your user page is about you as a Wikipedian, and pages in your user space should be used as part of your efforts to contribute to the project.

Deletion of user pages

If you wish to delete your own page, tag the top of the page with {{db-u1}}, and an administrator will delete it for you. However, note that user talk pages are normally not deleted.

Templates

For user pages:

{{User info}}

{{User page}}

{{Userpage blue border}}

{{Userpage Blue}}

{{User page rounded}}

{{Userpageblue%26round}}, i.e., Userpageblue&round

{{User page mini}}

{{Userpage (no table)}}

{{Userpage otheruse}} for a cross-reference to an article

{{Userpage bar}} for not mentioning a mirror

For user talk pages:

{{User info talk}}

{{Usertalkpage}}

{{Usertalkpage blue border}}

{{Usertalkpage2}}

{{Usertalk bar}} for not mentioning a mirror

For drafts in the user namespace:

{{Userspace draft}}

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