A KoL Wiki:User page

The KoL Wiki provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in the project. If your username is Example, then:

• Your user page is the page at User:Example.
• Your user talk page is the page at User talk:Example.
• Your user subpages are pages of the form User:Example/Lipsum or User talk:Example/Lipsum.
• Your user space is the collection of all of the above.

Details about yourself generally should not go in the main namespace, which is reserved for in-game content.

What can I have on my user page?

Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with The KoL Wiki. It is a mistake to think of it as a homepage: The KoL Wiki is not a free host, blog, webspace provider or social networking site. Instead, think of it as a way of organizing the work that you are doing on the articles in The KoL Wiki, and also a way of helping other editors to understand with whom they're working.

Some people add a little 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 emulate this.

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

Another use is to let people know about your activities on The KoL Wiki, and your opinions about The KoL Wiki. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities on The KoL Wiki, and your (constructive) 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 articles or images (abiding with the image use policy), or something like that. In the event that your editing privileges are revoked, a notice of this may be placed on your user page.

You are welcome to include a link to your personal home page, although you should refrain from surrounding it with any promotional language.

NOTE: User pages are often reached through user signatures on talk pages.

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 (this is typically not necessary, though some people do this).
• Archives of user talk.
• Tests; for testing a template, make it a separate subpage.
• Sections of the main page that are big enough to require their own page, i.e. a page of awards you have received or pictures you have taken.

What can I not have on my user page?

Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to The KoL Wiki. The KoL Wiki is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal homepage. Examples of unrelated content include:

• A weblog relating your non-The KoL Wiki activities.
• Extensive discussion not related to The KoL Wiki.
• Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages).
• Personal statements that could be considered polemical, such as opinions on matters unrelated to The KoL Wiki.
• Opinion pieces not related to KoL or other non-encyclopedic material.
• Communications with people uninvolved with the project.
• Images which you are not free to use (see below).

In general, if you have material that you do not wish for others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for The KoL Wiki, 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 good alternative for content unrelated to KoL.

Do not include non-free images (images uploaded to The KoL Wiki without the permission of the copyright owner, or under licenses that do not permit commercial use) on your user page or on any subpage thereof. Non-free images found on a user page (including user talk pages) may be removed (preferably by replacing it with a link to the image) from that page without warning (and, if not used in a The KoL Wiki article, deleted entirely).

Do not put your userpage or subpages, including work-in-progress articles, into categories used by The KoL Wiki articles. 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:Adventures]]. 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|item}}.

Ownership and editing of pages in the user space

As a tradition, The KoL Wiki offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit. However, pages in user spaces still do belong to the community:

• Other users may edit pages in your user space, although by convention your user page will usually not be edited by others.
• Community policies apply to your user space just as they do elsewhere.
• 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.

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. Protected pages in user spaces should be listed at TheKolWiki:List of protected pages, along with the rationale for protection.

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 spaces. Sometimes, a non-administrator's user page may be the target of vandalism. If this occurs, then the page should brought up in some sort of discussion, after which an administrator might protect it, if he or she decides that it is necessary to do so.

Note that repeatedly inserting copyrighted content on your own user page after being notified that doing so violates our policy is also considered vandalism, 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 repeat 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.

Protected pages in user spaces should be unprotected as soon as possible.

Removal

If the community lets you know that they would rather you deleted some or other 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 been here for a while, and 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 cooperate, 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. Please do not recreate content deleted in this way: doing so is grounds for immediate re-deletion. Instead, please respect our judgement about what is and is not appropriate.

How do I create a user subpage?

To create a user subpage, for use as a personal sandbox, you can:

• Go to the URL and start the page, e.g. http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Special:Mypage/Sandbox.
• Follow a red link to the subpage, e.g. Special:Mypage/Sandbox.
• Type the subpage name into the search bar and click "Go", e.g. "Special:Mypage/Sandbox".

How do I delete a user subpage?

You can easily get any of your user subpages deleted by adding them to the pages for deletion.

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 at the pages for deletion.

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 be deleted. Most frequently, this occurs when a long-term contributor decides to leave.

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 occasionally.

User pages that have been deleted can be recreated with a blank 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, "discussion", and the like, other users at The KoL Wiki can also click "User contributions" (in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page) to see what contributions you have made at The KoL Wiki over time. Please note that having your user page deleted does not also delete this list of your contributions.