Wikiquote:User page
Wikiquote provides users' pages to facilitate communication among participants in the project. If your username is Example:
- Your user page is the page at Special:MyPage
- Your user talk page is the page at Special:MyTalk
- Your user subpages are pages of the form Special:MyPage/Subpage or Special:MyTalk/Subpage.
- 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 quotations.
What can I have on my user page?
Whatever you like, within some reasonable boundaries.
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, other 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 Wikiquote 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 Wikiquote. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities on Wikiquote, and your opinions on how certain Wikiquote articles or policies should be changed. If you won't be editing Wikiquote 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 Wikiquote articles or images, or something like that. Also, someone may choose to award you a barnstar. In the unlikely event that your editing privileges on Wikiquote are revoked, a notice of this may be placed on your user page.
If you want to dual-license your contributions under an additional license or declare them all public domain, put a notice to this effect on your user page. Because of the large templates and long category names, some editors move the license templates to a subpage (see below).
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.
Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikiquote. Wikiquote is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal homepage. Your page is about you as a Wikiquotian.
Do not include non-free images on your user page or on any subpage thereof. Non-free images (images uploaded to Wikiquote without the permission of the copyright owner, or under licenses that do not permit commercial use) are permitted on Wikiquote 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 a user talk pages) may be removed from that page without warning (and, if not used anywhere else on Wikiquote, deleted entirely).
You may include one or more Wikiquotian categories. Wikiquotian categories are intended to help Wikiquotians with similar broad interests to congregate and converse. They have some similarity to WikiProjects, but are much less formal. Wikiquotain categories should not overlap with article categories. It is important to include the word "Wikiquotian" in such category names. Also, they should be categories with the general Wikiquotian category.
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. Subpages are created by adding a slash (/) and the name of the subpage after your username. For example, Special:MyPage/Subpage.
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 Wikiquote. Examples include:
- A weblog relating your non-Wikiquote activities
- Extensive discussion not related to Wikiquote
- Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages)
- Opinion pieces not related to Wikiquote.
- Games, roleplaying sessions, and other things that fall into "entertainment", particularly if they involve people who are not active participants in the project.
- Communications with people uninvolved with the project
- See also: Wikiquote:What Wikiquote is not
Free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a good alternative for content unrelated to Wikiquote. You might also want to consider Fandom for wiki-style community collaboration.
The Wikiquote 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 Wikiquotians with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the project.
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, Wikiquote 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:
- Contributions must be licensed under the CC BY-SA and the GFDL licenses, just as articles are.
- 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 Wikiquote, 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. Protected pages in user space should be listed at Wikiquote:Protected page along with the rationale for protection.
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. In rare cases a non-administrator's user page may be the target of vandalism. Such pages should be listed at Wikiquote:Vandalism in progress 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).
In excessive cases, your user subpage may be deleted, following a listing on Wikiquote:Votes for deletion, subject to deletion policy. Please do not recreate content deleted in this way: doing so is grounds for immediate re-deletion (see candidates for speedy deletion). Instead, please respect our judgement about what is and is not appropriate.
How do I delete my user subpages?
You can easily get any of your user subpages deleted by adding {{delete}} to the page.
Alternatively, you might consider simply making the page redirect to your user page. This is normally sufficient for most people's needs.
Only tag for deletion your own personal pages, and only if you have a genuine reason for requesting a personal subpage of yours be deleted.
Pages which have formerly been in a different namespace and moved to a subpage of the user namespace may not be deleted in this way. These must be listed at Votes for deletion.
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.
To request deletion of your user page, add {{db|user page}} to the page, optionally explaining why you want the page deleted. Provided that the page does not contain evidence of policy violations that may need to be kept, such pages are almost always deleted. If a user page and user talk page were deleted because a contributor left, it may be restored by a sysop if the contributor returns, particularly if the history contains evidence of policy violations.
As a matter of practice user talk pages are generally not deleted; however, exceptions to this can be and are made on occasion for good reason.
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 Wikiquote can also, at the bottom of the page (or in the sidebar), click "User contributions" to see what contributions you have made at Wikiquote over time. See MediaWiki User's Guide: User contributions page for more.
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.