User Page - What may I Have in My User Pages?

What may I Have in My User Pages?

There is no fixed use for user pages, except that usually one's user page has something about oneself, and one's talk page is used for messaging. Provided other users can quickly and easily find the pages they need, users may, within reason, freely organize their user pages as they choose.

Users may include a user page notice on their own user pages, user talk pages, or both. Placing the template {{User page}} at the start of a user page clearly identifies the nature of the page for readers, and also helps if people find the labeled page in copies of Wikipedia elsewhere (more about this below) and want to locate the original.

Contributions can also be given a wider license - for example releasing them into the public domain or multi-licensing them - by putting a notice to this effect on one's user page, or on a subpage linked from it. Note that it is not possible to give them narrower licensing: all edits on Wikipedia, including all userspace edits, are licensed for used under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and in most cases the GNU Free Documentation License as part of Wikipedia.

User pages may be mirrored by other sites. If there is material you do not want copied, reposted, or reused, do not post it on the site.

Certain kinds of material must not linger indefinitely in user space; see below for details.

Besides communication, other legitimate uses of user space include (but are not limited to):

Significant editing disclosures (voluntary but recommended) Things other editors may find helpful to understand, such as alternative accounts (if publicly disclosed) If you are editing for or on behalf of a company, organization, group, product, or person (etc.) which you wish to be open about in order to gain a good working relationship with the editing community. (Editing must always be neutral and within encyclopedia norms. Editors tend to distrust concealed conflicts of interest and agendas. Openly disclosing such interests gains respect, invites others to help and shows a desire to edit appropriately.)

Notes related to your Wikipedia work and activities Current or planned articles, topic areas, to-do lists, reminders, articles worked on, accolades and other successes, collaborative works, draft proposals, (constructive) thoughts on Wikipedia articles or policies and how they should be changed, etc. Expansion and detailed backup for points being made (or which you may make) in discussions elsewhere on the wiki.

Work in progress or material that you may come back to in future (usually on subpages) Drafts, especially where you want discussion or other users' opinions first, for example due to conflict of interest or major proposed changes Drafts being written in your own user space because the target page itself is protected, and notes and working material for articles (Some content may not be kept indefinitely).

Useful links, tools, and scripts

User space archives Old talk page threads, etc. (Some content may not be kept indefinitely in userspace if unused.)

Matters that are long enough in length, or active enough, to allocate them a page of their own

Personal writings suitable within the Wikipedia community Non-article Wikipedia material such as reasonable Wikipedia humor, essays and perspectives, personal philosophy, comments on Wikipedia matters Disclosures of important matters such as absences or self-corrections that you would like other editors to know about, etc. Statements of congratulations or condolence for major events, especially if related to Wikipedia editorship or major life-events. (Make sure the user wants these to be publicly mentioned on the wiki, they may wish it to be private.)

Experimentation (usually on subpages) Trial pages for templates, unfamiliar or specialist markup (including LaTeX), etc., as a kind of personal sandbox. Pages to test bots and scripts without doing harm. User pages and user subpages can be transcluded and substituted, so they behave like templates, and can be tested as such.

Limited autobiographical content For example, languages you know (see Wikipedia:Babel) or fields you have knowledge in.

A small and proportionate amount of suitable unrelated material A number of users have Wikipedia and sister project content such as (free use) pictures from Wikimedia Commons, favorite Wikipedia articles, or quotations that they like. Pages used for blatant promotion or as a soapbox or battleground for unrelated matters are usually considered outside this criterion. For example: a five page résumé and advertising for your band will probably be too much, a brief three sentence summary that you work in field X and have a band named Y will be fine.

You are also welcome to include a simple link to your personal home page, although you should not surround it with any promotional language.

User pages are also used for administrative purposes, to make users aware of blocks, warnings, or other sanctions if they happen, and to notify of matters that may affect articles you have worked on or editorial issues you have been involved with. Others may also edit your user pages, for instance awarding you a barnstar or leaving notes and images for you, or adding comments and questions. Although you have wide leeway to edit your user pages, a few of these matters should not be removed (see below).