cobble together an identity
Yesterday, I finally found the Wikipedia pages that list userboxes, so I edited my user profile page to include several userboxes. While very active editors often have extensive user pages that list their interests and editing philosophies, I barely edit the encyclopedia at all. If I make changes at all, I fix some copyediting problems. I registered an account primarily to watch articles and dig deep into the policy discussions for my research. Still, I felt a little lame having no user page.
I’ve never been a fan of blog badges — it seems like you should blog about your interests and causes rather than add a trail of little graphics, but I think that the userboxes are a nice way to cobble together an identity from pre-fab components. Inserting the userboxes give the appearance of having some investment in the page, at least compared to first sad effort at making a user page. Two of the userboxes I used, the boxes for vegetarian and public transport issues, fall under the category of beliefs and convictions, which apparently are threatened with deletion. The page says, “It should be noted that use of such userboxes is strongly discouraged at Wikipedia, and it is likely that very soon all these userboxes will be deleted or moved to userspace.” I haven’t had time to read the entire policy discussion around eliminating these boxes, but I don’t see how stating you’re a vegetarian or a transit enthusiast would prevent you from participating effectively. However, it does seem like an effort to discipline the user community into presenting identities that are ostensibly free of ideology or opinion. Userboxes provide an easy way to represent the human side of Wikipedia, users are folded into an anonymous mass, picking away at the encyclopedia.
I’ve had the same thought, in a vague way, though never really articulated. I slapped a few userboxes on my own user page, including a couple I made up myself.