I’m probably the only one who has thought of an idea like this. Since I also edit Wikipedia, I will try to suggest that idea there too.
Many people on wikiHow don’t want their user pages vandalized. So, to prevent vandalism to user pages, I would like to see if protecting it so only the owner of the account and administrators can edit the page is a good idea.
Maybe, the admin should definitely still be able to edit and people like that because they need to check for broken images and other things like that
Also, what’s your Wikipedia account name? Just curious. Mine is DCat67
My Wikipedia account is “I’m not perfect but I’m almost”. I am a rollbacker and have pending changes review rights.
Hmm, this might not always work. Sometimes, the owner might request someone to design their user page, and by protecting the page, it will no longer work.
We try to limit page protection to pages that really need
it - in other words, pages that are getting repeatedly vandalized. A lot of people who edit other people’s User pages are new and don’t realize that they shouldn’t be editing it, and the majority of other cases are drive-by vandalism. I’ve had my User page protected once years ago, when a bunch of anons kept vandalizing it over a period of several days, but I don’t think I’ve had it protected since - persistent vandalism of a User page is pretty rare, thankfully, and the rest of it can just be rolled back and the user who did it can be coached
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I was accused of vandalizing someone’s user page once- I was a new user, and I wanted to give someone a UIB I’d made. I had permission, but the admin didn’t know. Oops!
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Hey @Rock20000
we always appreciate suggestions to help make wikiHow a better place! I think @Galactic-Radiance
has a good point here though, in that we do try to limit page protection. I think protecting user pages might be a little too restrictive, so I’d be happy with user pages staying as is for now.
Maybe there could be a “Page Protection” toggle, and only the owner of the user page or an admin could switch it on and off.
Hmm, that is a good idea, @Feliciano-Vargas
.
I am neutral to this.
On one hand, I think we can protect user pages from new and unregistered
contributors to prevent vandalism. Wikipedia has a nice filter
for that, we just need to import and tweak it for our own personal use. The way that works is that there is a hidden template that if added, will allow anyone to edit the user page.
On the other hand, I disagree with the idea of a protection toggle for user pages. User pages exist for the sole purpose of sharing information about our editing to the world. Plus, protecting user pages implies that the user page belongs to an individual, which is counter to the wiki spirit. Which is why I think user pages should not be protected in the same way as other pages per se.
As a compromise, I would suggest preventing new contributors from editing other’s user pages, while allowing established contributors to make friendly edits to user pages.
I kind of disagree. See my above comment
There isn’t really a need to prevent new users from editing other contributors’ user pages, though? Actual vandalism is pretty rare, and like I mentioned, most new editors who edit someone else’s user page just aren’t aware that they shouldn’t be editing it. That can be solved by just gently letting them know that user pages are editors’ personal spaces and that they shouldn’t be edited without permission. A personal message is a lot friendlier than an automated protection.
TBH, sometimes it’s nice to have new users edit userpages. Like I’ve gotten lots of {{I am AWESOME}} templates from new users, and those are good-faith edits.
Yeah, that’s also kind of true… we can still have a friendly message in the abuse filter message, that is one advantage of MediaWiki
Having been around the community for quite a while, what I’ve found to be the primary driver of whether we move forward with a suggestion is to gauge whether the proposal helps further wikiHow’s Mission to empower every person on the planet to learn how to do anything.
When thinking about this suggestion, it doesn’t really address any issues the community is experiencing (since we don’t have any issues with vandals editing user pages), and - most importantly - it doesn’t help us further our mission, so it’s not likely something worth pursuing at this time.
The criteria described above are especially true when it’s something that would require a substantial amount of engineering resources to implement, which is the case with this proposal.
I sometimes have to edit users’ use pages to remove broken file links, categories, etc. I feel that protection might be a problem because it would make it harder for users to fix the little technical things.
Kitty0
19
I think it’s better to protect the pages that are being repeatedly vandalized. Protecting all user pages might make it hard for other users to collaborate with each other. For example, I help new users design and create their user pages, but with a protection, I won’t be able to.
I personally do not think I would like such an idea. A lot of us don’t know how to put up the pretty borders and colored texts that wow the eye, and some turn to those of you that know how to do this. To me that is the biggest problem out there. If user pages are being protected, either we have to learn the wikiCodes ourselves or have those of you that are both admins and user page designers (few compared to those that are only user page designers) do the job.
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