I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.

Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.

I think rather than us having to go through a mass deletion (which is what is likely to happen if the userbox fad doesn't go away), it will be better to simply change the culture, one person at a time. Will you help me?--Jimbo Wales 10:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The current situation with these things being in the main Template namespace, and promoted as if healthy and normal in the Wikipedia namespace, is that they are damaging to our culture. They are attracting the wrong sort of people, and giving newcomers the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.

That's why they need to go. Not to censor people's self-expression, but to make it clear that as a whole the community considers these things to be divisive and inappropriate. Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) Mon Feb 20 19:34:13 UTC 2006

'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 soon. Their use and creation is not recommended at this time.Jimmy Wales Mon Feb 20 18:01 UTC

While diversity is nice, and will always exist, having a bunch of simple, over-confidant, and dogmantic 2D voices do not add up to a good represention of any topic/article, nor is it good for the community.

Oversimplified and polemical userboxes show a lack of consideration to underlying issues and a lack of consern for those of differing opinions. We need a communinity of editors who try to put their baises aside, not to throw them in everyone's face by calling everyone a Nazi. An article created by a right-wing zealot, a dogmanitic doomsdayer, an "anything goes" far-leftist "freedom fighter", and a person who thinks Bush is an evil entity worse than Hitler will end up being a choppy, broken, inconsistant, poorly styled and will be pro-POV in some anti-POV in other sections.

Look at my user page; diversity is nice, and we all vary, but keep in mind the "voice of all", lets try to be 3D each as ourselves. If you think that Bush's presidency has expanded the scope of presidential authority beyond that of the consitution...be intellectual and academic by writting a well written essay on it, maybe have it on your main page or link it. What you should not do is be divisive and "sound-bytish" by saying things like "Bushes edit to the constitution need to be reverted" which is technically invalid as the constitution is the same.

What I am getting at is that we need an academic, intellectual environment here to at least some extent. This leads to the creation top quality articles and good discussion/dialogue. Quick soundbytes (like boxes) and snappy, divisive, language without any though behind them is just NOT a good environment. My own userboxes link to to an article that explains exactly what I support, and there is nothing divisive about them. If I said "this user is sick of right-wing christians that commit global suicide by ignoring the environment", then we would have a problem. That is based of an assertion that is not proven/discussed, and blindly and visciously attacks a large group of people (and it over-generalizes).

Without getting into the views themselves too much, I just think that presentation is often the main problem. If someone held a racist views with regards to intellect and civility, I would not agree, but if they wrote about it in a calm enough/reasonable way I wouldn't go "delete happy", though likely the essay would not be that polite, but who knows? Lets just try to keep an academic environent though, as I believe that is is helpful in creating a hight quality encyclopedia.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 04:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)