User:Bellezzasolo/Great Userbox Wars

The Userbox Wars
Date January 2006 - June 2006, ongoing skirmishes Location Wikipedia, primarily Templates for Discussion Result General inclusionist victory, deletionists gain concessions
Belligerents
Association of Deletionist Wikipedians	Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians
Commanders and leaders
Kelly Martin Tony Sidaway	Shii

Background

The userbox wars originated in differences of opinion over the treaty of user pages. Userboxes are small rectangles of a standard size, which can be placed en masse onto a user page, typically consisting of text and an image in a colourful border. The Association of Deletionist Wikipedians felt that userboxes violated the rule banning "Opinion pieces not related to Wikipedia or other non-encyclopedic material". However, the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians felt that "The Wikipedia community is fairly tolerant and offers fairly wide latitude in applying these guidelines to regular participants." justified the existence of political userboxes.

The Beginning

Some disputed userboxes

This user is an Anarchist.

This user is a Communist.

The beginning of the war is generally considered to be at the start of 2006. As The Signpost reported, by this era of Wikipedia, userboxes had become popular. Kelly Martin deleted a large number of userboxes between 30th December and 31st December 2005, which she deemed to be controversial. This lead to a backlash from the inclusionists, opening various discussions within the community. However, the result of these discussions was only to demonstrate the fractitious nature of the community on this issue. An example of a userbox that was deleted, but later reinstated, was {{User Anarchist}}. This event came to be known by some as the New Year's Purge.

War breaks out

After the New Year's Purge, an explosion in userboxes being sent to Templates for discussion ensued. Early skirmishes included Template:User does not trust Jimbo, which was deleted as a personal attack. Template:User freedom was kept in a deletion debate, but was eventually userfied. Its current whearabouts are unknown. Tensions came to a head on 5 February 2006, at 04:25 (Universal Time for Contributors). MarkSweep attacked a fringe member of the userbox clan, Template:User pedophile, exiling it from the encyclopedia. As an administrator, MarkSweep's high position of authority meant that this was viewed as an unacceptable abuse of power. Shii promptly invited the wayward userbox back. What ensued was a cross border skirmish with 3 deletions and an equal number of restorations fired that very day.

Immediate Response

The involvement of Jimbo Wales in the conflict quickly made headlines. An arbitration case was made at Jimbo's behest, which concluded that the userbox was indeed in violation of policy, and should remain deleted:

While not explicitly stated on Wikipedia:User page, it is implicit there that users should refrain from creating user pages likely to bring the project into disrepute. The pedophile userbox (and the like) falls into this category. Note that this should not be construed to bar reasonable criticism of the project.

— The Arbitration Committee

End of the conflict

Wikipedia:Userbox migration was created on 1st June 2006. This followed the solution found at German Wikipedia. The conflict, however, continued through July - Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 July 14. The conflict is generally considered to have ended in this period, being considered over by August.