Wikipedia:User page

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For usernames in general, see Wikipedia:Username (WP:USERNAME).
For more on user talk pages, and talk pages in general, see Wikipedia:Talk page (WP:TALKPAGE or WP:TP).
This page is a guideline on user pages. Your userpage is here.
✔ This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss your idea on the talk page.
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Wikipedia provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in its project to build an encyclopedia.

If your username is Example:

Note: "Your" in this context means associated with you, not belonging to you.

The Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk special pages will take each user to her or his own user and user talk pages, respectively. Others will not be able to find your user page using Special:Mypage, they will be able to visit it only by going to User:Example (for the example user).

Details about you generally should not go in the main namespace, which is reserved for encyclopedic content, unless you are notable and someone else writes it.

If you would prefer not to have a user page, then it is recommended that you redirect it to your user talk page for the convenience of other editors.

Contents

What may I have on my user page?

To start with, you might include a userpage notice. The text "{{userpage}}" will generate a tag which looks something like the one below. This is by no means a requirement but it can be helpful, especially for viewers new to Wikipedia who might be confused about what a personal page is doing on an encyclopedia.

This is a Wikipedia user page.

This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at [automatically-generated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:YourName link].

Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with the Wikipedia project. It is a mistake to think of it as a homepage as Wikipedia is not a blog, webspace provider, nor social networking site. Instead, think of it as a way of organizing the work that you are doing on the articles in Wikipedia, and also a way of helping other editors to understand with whom they are working.

Some people add information about themselves as well, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, their real name, their location, information about their areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. (If you are concerned with privacy, you may not want to and are by no means required to emulate this.)

You can use your user page to help you to use Wikipedia more effectively: to list "to do" information, works in progress, reminders, useful links, and so forth. It is also good for experimenting with markup (that is, as a personal sandbox).

Another common use is to let people know about your activities on Wikipedia, and your opinions about Wikipedia. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities on Wikipedia, and your (constructive) opinions on how certain Wikipedia articles or policies should be changed. If you will not be editing Wikipedia for a while, drop a note on your user page to that effect.

You might want to add quotations that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite Wikipedia articles or images (freely licensed only – see the What may I not have on my user page? section below), or the like.

Others may also edit your user page, for instance awarding you a barnstar or leaving other images for you. In the event that your editing privileges on Wikipedia 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, you may 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 the What about user subpages? section below). Whether you include an explicit license statement or not, however, all of your edits on Wikipedia are also licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Many users include mentions of the languages they know (see Wikipedia:Babel).

You are welcome to include a link to your personal home page, although you should not surround it with any promotional language.

Note: user pages are often reached through user signatures on talk pages.

What about user subpages?

Shortcut:
WP:UP#SUB

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. This is typically not necessary, though some people do this especially for WP:COI compliance or drafts of a page whose title is protected. See also: #Copies of other pages
  • Archives of user talk
  • Tests; for testing a template, make it a separate subpage.
  • Sections of your user page that are big enough to require their own page, e.g. a page of awards you have received or pictures you have taken.

What may I not have on my user page?

Shortcut:
WP:UP#NOT

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 homepage. Your page is about you as a Wikipedian. Examples of unrelated content include:

  1. A weblog recording your non-Wikipedia activities
  2. Extensive discussion not related to Wikipedia
  3. Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages) unrelated to Wikipedia
  4. Extensive personal opinions on matters unrelated to Wikipedia, wiki philosophy, collaboration, free content, the Creative Commons, etc.
  5. Personal information of other persons without their consent
  6. Advertising or promotion of a business or organization unrelated to Wikipedia (such as purely commercial sites or referral links)
  7. Other non-encyclopedic related material
  8. Polemical statements unrelated to Wikipedia
  9. Material that can be construed as attacking other editors, including the recording of perceived flaws. An exception is made for evidence compiled within a reasonable time frame to prepare for a dispute resolution process. This exception is subject to common sense, but as a general rule, two weeks is a reasonable time to prepare such a page.
  10. Games, roleplaying sessions, and other things pertaining to "entertainment" rather than "writing an encyclopedia," particularly if they involve people who are not active participants in the project. (cite as WP:UP#Games) (compare Category:Wikipedia games and Category:Wikipedia Word Association.)
  11. Communications with people uninvolved with the project or related work
  12. Images which you are not free to use (usually fair use images; see below)
  13. Categories and templates intended for other usage, in particular those for articles and guidelines

In general, if you have material that you do not wish for others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for Wikipedia, it should be placed on a personal web site. Many free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a proper place for content unrelated to Wikipedia. You might also want to consider Wikia for wiki-style community collaboration. Alternatively, you can download the MediaWiki software and install it on your own server if you want full control.

The Wikipedia community is generally 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 Wikipedians with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the encyclopedia. But at the same time, if user page activity becomes disruptive to the community or gets in the way of the task of building an encyclopedia, it must be modified to prevent disruption.

Do not put your userpage or subpages, including work-in-progress articles, into categories used by Wikipedia articles (example: Category:1990 births). Be careful of templates and stub notices that put a work-in-progress article into categories. You can "quote" categories by adding a colon before "Category", like this: [[:Category:Bridges]]. This turns it into an ordinary link. Templates and stub notices can be turned into links to themselves by putting tl| ("tl" followed by a pipe character) in front of their names, like this: {{tl|stub}} You can also "comment out" a portion of text by placing <!-- in front of it and --> after it; this makes the parser ignore that portion of the page.

Statements of violence

Statements that encourage, and/or condone, specifically, acts of violence against any person(s) or group(s) are not allowed on user pages. This only includes the mention, or implication, of specific violent acts — for example, murder or rape. It does not, however, include statements that support controversial groups or regimes, that some may interpret as an encouragement of violence.

Copies of other pages

While userpages and subpages can be used as a development ground for generating new content, this space is not intended to indefinitely archive your preferred version of disputed or previously deleted content or indefinitely archive permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia. In other words, Wikipedia is not a free web host. Private copies of pages that are being used solely for long-term archival purposes may be subject to deletion.

Similarly, pages kept in userspace should not be designed to functionally substitute for articles or Wikipedia space pages. If you find that your user subpage has become as useful as a normal article or project page, consider moving it into the appropriate namespace or merging it with other similar pages already existing there. One should never create links from a mainspace article to any userpage, nor should a userspace essay be used as the primary documentation for any Wikipedia policy, guideline, practice, or concept.

Images on user pages

Do not include non-free images (copyrighted images lacking a free content license) on your user page or on any subpage thereof (this is official policy and the usual wide user page latitude does not apply, see Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria for details). Non-free images found on a user page (including user talk pages) will be removed (preferably by replacing it with a link to the image) from that page without warning (and, if not used in a Wikipedia article, deleted entirely).
There is broad consensus that you should not have any image on your userpage that would bring the project into disrepute (per Jimbo Wales), and you may be asked to remove such images.

Simulated MediaWiki interfaces

The Wikipedia community generally frowns upon simulating the MediaWiki interface, and it should be avoided except when necessary for testing purposes.

Inappropriate content

See also the policy section Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Non-article space.

There is broad agreement that you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute, or which is likely to give widespread offense (e.g. pro-pedophilia advocacy) — whether serious or trolling, it's not what user pages are for. Wikipedia is not a soapbox is usually interpreted as applying to user space as well as the encyclopedia itself. You do have more latitude in user space than elsewhere, but don't be inconsiderate. Extremely offensive material may be removed on sight by any editor.

Ownership and editing of pages in the user space

Shortcut:
WP:UP#OWN

As a tradition, Wikipedia 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 GFDL, 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 Wikipedia:No personal attacks, apply to your user space just as they do elsewhere. Article content policies such as WP:OR generally do not.
  • In some cases, material that does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed (see below), as well as edits from banned users.

In general it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing another's user page without their permission. 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.

Removal of comments, warnings

See also: Wikipedia:Don't restore removed comments
Shortcuts:
WP:UP#CMT
WP:BLANKING

Policy does not prohibit users, including both registered and anonymous users, from removing comments from their own talk pages, although archiving is preferred. The removal of a warning is taken as evidence that the warning has been read by the user. Deleted warnings can still be found in the page history. Repeatedly replacing warnings does nothing but antagonize users, and can encourage further disruption; removal of template warnings is rarely an urgent or important matter, and it is often best to simply let the matter rest if other disruption stops.

Important exceptions may include declined unblock requests (while blocks are still in effect) or confirmed sockpuppetry notices. In this case it may be legitimate to keep a user from gaming the system. Such templates are intended not only to communicate with the user in question, but to display important information about blocks and sockpuppetry.

Users should note that restoring talk page warnings is not a listed exception to the three-revert rule.

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 a contributor'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 Wikipedia:Requests for page protection and may then be protected by an administrator.

Note that repeatedly inserting copyrighted content on your own user page after being notified that doing so violates our policy is also considered disruptive, and may result in it being protected.

Vandalism of talk pages is less common. Usually such vandalism should merely be reverted. Blocks should be used for repeated 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.

Removal of inappropriate content

If the community lets you know that they would rather you delete some content from your user space, you should consider doing so — such content is only permitted with the consent of the community. Alternatively, you could move the content to another site, and link to it.

If you do not cooperate, inappropriate content will eventually be removed, 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 extreme cases, your user subpage may be deleted, following a listing on Miscellany for deletion, subject to deletion policy.

What to do if you find someone else's user page being used inappropriately

A user page being used as a personal web page may be nominated for deletion at Miscellany for deletion. A personal image may be nominated for deletion at Images and media for deletion. If you are considering nominating a user page or personal image for deletion because it appears to be used as a personal web page or a blog, please be aware that many editors will consider this a personal attack on themselves, because they may believe they own "my userpage". Be very careful not to scare a newbie away from Wikipedia, and try to assume good faith that they are merely trying to share information about themselves. Try to resolve the issue on the user's talk page first. Also note that a limited amount of personal information (perhaps a short biography) and a freely licensed (never fair use) tasteful personal photograph or two are usually allowed on a user's page in order to show the user's human side, but only if the page complies with other Wikipedia policies. Users with most of their contribution edits outside their user space should be given more leeway in this regard than users whose edits consist solely or mostly of user space edits. And always remember that a user's user page simply being used as a personal web page is not in itself a speedy deletion criterion. User pages that go beyond this into advertising may be tagged for speedy deletion however: most of the speedy deletion criteria apply equally to user space as to main space. The only exceptions are that test edits and the re-creation of deleted material are permitted in user space.

How do I create a user subpage?

In all namespaces except for the article namespace (where articles are created), it is possible to create a subpage of a "parent" page. So if a page is called "PAGE", a subpage of "PAGE" with the name "SUBPAGE" would be located at "PAGE/SUBPAGE".

User:Example/Lipsum is an example of a user subpage for User:Example. Your user page, if it exists yet, is here. If you wanted to create a user subpage called "Sandbox", you would find it here.

New editors and experienced Wikipedians can use subpages to their user page to develop templates and articles, test wikitext markup, and create new articles before moving them to the main Wikipedia space.

There are several common uses for user subpages:

  1. To place user page-appropriate content on a separate page in order to avoid having a large user page or merely not to conspicuously display it (for example, an awards page).
  2. To plan large changes to articles, new articles, or allow Wikipedians to draft graphical layout overhauls.
  3. To delineate views on Wikipedia, its functioning, or behavior of Wikipedians in general.
  4. To test wikimarkup or LaTeX. User pages and user subpages can be transcluded and substituted, so they behave like templates, and can be tested as such. Pages meant for arbitrary testing are called sandboxes; there is a sandbox for general testing, but not for long-term development.

To link to a user subpage called "Sandbox" from your main user page, place the text

[[/Sandbox]]

on your page, or use a piped link with the same source. Make sure to experiment on your user page, not on this page! Do not forget the first forward slash or you will put the page in the main namespace as a regular article and will have to ask for speedy deletion if you save what you write (by tagging the page with {{db-author}}). If your user page does not have a subpage named "Sandbox", the link will appear to be red, indicating that a page has no content, and if you just navigate away without saving any content the page will not be created and there is nothing to delete.

Sandboxes are useful for testing changes to pages, but once you are sure of yourself regarding an edit, you can just click on the "Show preview" button, and proof-read thoroughly. If you need help creating a user subpage, you can get assistance at WP:UPH. You can add an infobox named {{User Sandbox}} to your sandbox. The infobox notes that the sandbox is used to make tests.

How do I delete a user subpage?

You can easily request the deletion of any of your user subpages (or possibly your user page) by adding {{db-userreq}} to the top of page.

Alternatively, you might consider simply making the page redirect to your user page. This is normally sufficient for most people's needs. There may however be a reason for the page to be kept.

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 either at Articles for deletion, or if they were not found originally in the article namespace, at Miscellany for deletion. On the other hand, if you would just like them to be moved back, then by all means ask at Wikipedia:Requested moves.

How do I delete my user pages?

Where there is no significant abuse and no administrative need to retain the personal information, you can request that your own user page and user subpages be deleted.

This is done instead of account deletion because accounts with contributions cannot be deleted as this would allow another user to create the account, and claim authorship of those edits. It is not possible for your edits to be removed entirely; for this reason, removing the account would potentially violate copyrights by allowing for such authorship claims.

Just add to the page: {{db-userreq}}. An administrator will then delete it after checking that the page does not contain evidence of policy violations that may need to be kept. If there has been no disruptive behavior meriting the retention of that personal information, then the administrator can delete the page straight away in order to eliminate general public distribution of the history containing the information. If the deletion occurs immediately, others may request undeletion if they feel there was in fact a need to retain the page. In such a case, the page should be undeleted and listed on Miscellany for deletion for a period of five days following the deletion of the user page. If a user page was deleted because a contributor left, it may be restored by an administrator if the contributor returns, particularly if the history contains evidence of policy violations.

How do I delete my user talk pages?

As a matter of practice user talk pages are generally not deleted, barring legal threats or other grievous violations that have to be removed for legal reasons; however, exceptions to this can be and are made on occasion for good reason (see right to vanish). In addition, nonpublic personal information and potentially libellous information posted to your talk page may be removed by making a request for oversight.

Users who have left Wikipedia may be added to Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians.

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 Wikipedia can also click "User contributions" (in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page) to see what contributions you have made at Wikipedia over time. See MediaWiki User's Guide: User contributions page for more. Please note that having your user page deleted does not delete this list of your contributions.

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

See also