WikiIndex talk:Guidelines

see also: WikiIndex talk:Naming conventions, as a bunch of stuff moved there

people pages

I think it is a mistake, and confusing, to have people pages here that are not in user namespace. I have read a little of the theory of how that happened here. It would at least be consistent if someone went in and munged up the software so that user namespace did not exist, and all the people stuff went into the main namespace. (Are there examples of other wikis that do this, with good results?) But in reality, you have a deep core infrastructure built on user namespace. And then you have a few people pages in mainspace. *** I propose that non-userspace people pages here are appropriate for, at most, people that are "important" here or in the world of wikis in general. And that people make this decision for themself, about themself. *** And I propose that we say explicitly that "thou shalt not make pages here about other people". *** In a perfect world, I'd rather see all people pages here in userspace, with at most 5-10 in main space for people that started this wiki or are key in perpetuating it. *** And really, it would make most sense for non-userspace people pages here to be for NON-users of this wiki, people important in the history of wikidom in general. And such pages would be started by others, and at the most occasionally edited by the subject. But surely we don't want to get into such admin issues here, that an article about JW might attract. Let others fight about who really did or did not "(co-)found" the-wiki-that-must-not-be-named... (Well, maybe we could actually use the publicity, but I don't think we have the admin resources to spare.) --69.87.202.225 11:37, 17 February 2007 (PST)

"a deep core infrastructure built on user namespace"

The MediaWiki software that runs this wiki automatically generates links to userspace for every editor, assuming there is a User page for them and an associated Talk page, and also keeps track of contributions by that person, that anyone can easily see a list of. --69.87.193.53 14:28, 18 February 2007 (PST)

I don't actually see the problem with what we're doing now. Anyone in wikidom, which includes people editing here using their real name, is by-definition, on-topic, and thus in the main namespace. The fact that we're using mediawiki does not mean that just because someone's an editor here they are somehow less on-topic than people that are not editors here. TedErnst | talk 03:52, 27 February 2007 (PST)