Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help/Content Advice/Personal

Your userpage is a great way to introduce yourself to other Wikipedians. Your userpage should not just be used to write your biography or blog. However, there is still plenty of information that people will find interesting, including:

• Where you live
• What you do in meatspace (so-called "real life")
• What your interests are

Look around other people's userpages, and you'll also find a lot of pictures of people's cats and dogs, charts of which countries the editors have visited, and other 'unencyclopaedic' miscellanea. While not strictly encouraged, this generally falls under the part of Wikipedia:Userpage which states "Wikipedia offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit". Generally, the question is proportionality. If you spend a lot of time helping build the encyclopaedia, then no-one will mind if you spend some time on your userpage as well. If your userpage contains lots of information about how you can be of help (see Expertise), then a picture of your stick insects could set it off nicely.

The issue of how much personal information is tolerable and how much is "Myspacing" (a derogatory term for using a userpage as a social networking tool instead of as a means to help write Wikipedia) can be controversial, particularly since userboxes allow editors to display a massive amount of personal information with little time or effort; encouraging the presentation of personal information that users simply wouldn't bother to write an actual paragraph about. Keep a balance, and there should be no problem. A rule of thumb to consider is that if you have a column of biographical userboxes that stretches a long way past any actual text in your userpage, it may be excessive.

If someone criticises your use of your userpage, keep cool, and consider whether they have a point - removing it may be the best option. If not, don't reply with "It's my userpage, and I'll use it how I want" - this isn't true. Editors can and do remove material from your userpage if there is a consensus that it hinders the writing of the encyclopaedia (see Wikipedia:User page's section on this).

[edit] Privacy issues

Wikipedia is generally regarded as a safer place than most of the chatrooms and forums on the Internet. Many Wikipedians feel comfortable revealing their real name, or making a picture of themselves publicly available, something that is strongly discouraged in chatrooms and the like.

Note, however, that it is inadvisable to go into too much detail on your userpage. It is, sadly, not unknown for bad editors or vandals to track down a Wikipedian in real life and harass them. This is especially important for those that use their real name on Wikipedia, whether as their screen name, in their signature or even just on their userpage. While it is probably safe to tell someone what area you work in (accountancy, medical, lion taming) or the subject you study, revealing where you work or go to school or university is a bad idea, as malicious users have been known to contact employers and academics with frivolous complaints in an attempt to get editors into trouble.