Help:User page

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 PGVWIki 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 PGVWiki. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities, and your opinions on how certain articles or policies should be changed. If you won't be editing 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 things, or something like that. In the unlikely event that your editing privileges are revoked, a notice of this may be placed on your user page.

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 PGVWiki. PGVWiki is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal homepage.

Do not include non-free images on your user page or on any subpage thereof. Non-free images (images uploaded to PGVWiki without the permission of the copyright owner, or under licenses that do not permit commercial use) are permitted on 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, deleted entirely).

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.

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 PGVWiki. Examples include:

• A weblog relating your non-PGVWiki activities
• Extensive discussion not related to PGVWiki
• Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages)
• Opinion pieces not related to PGVWiki
• Communications with people uninvolved with the project

See also: PGVWiki:What PGVWiki is not

Free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a good alternative for content unrelated to PGVWiki.

The PGVWiki 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 PGVWiki members with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the resource.

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.

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 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 PGVWiki:Requests for page protection 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 pages, where policy permits. In rare cases, protection may be used but is considered a last resort given the importance of talk pages.

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 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 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 contact and discussion.

How do I delete my user subpages?

You can easily get any of your user subpages deleted by making a request to an Administrator.

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.

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.

Make a request to an Administrator to delete the page. 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 sysop 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 may be undeleted. If a user page and user talk page were 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.

User pages that have been deleted can be recreated with a blank page, or a link to another page to avoid red links pointing to them.

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 PGVWiki can also, at the bottom of the page (or in the sidebar), click "User contributions" to see what contributions you have made at PGVWiki over time.

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.