User pages

User pages

Why are you changing so many other users' user pages? Please let people decide for themselves how they want their userpages to be.

Jon Harald Søby (talk)00:11, 6 October 2022

You are also changing user pages, and you're not alone (and the content posted on user page is sometimes very huge via templates that users are not even allowed to edit to fit correctly their page, so they can no longer post their own user content! I am NOT doing that sort of pollution!).

I did not add any content, just made those page a bit more accessible, or fixed basic CSS, just to avoid unnecessary scrolling and a large unsued blank space, but still leaving free space for expansion. Also if there are references no longer working, I do not delete them but comment them out, if this helps cleaning up other things elsewhere (e.g. in error tracing categories, or dependecies that are no longer relevant, or external links no longer working, or gadgets and extensions that are no logner working on this site).

In some cases, users tried to figure out some way to organize their content, but this did not work, or is using deprecated or no logner supported syntax, which also fails to be accessible on other devices (notably smartphones with narrower screens) or just waste space on larger screens (requiring unnecessary scroll down to see the bottom of the page. If there are contents that fill the page correctly on desktop or mobile screen sizes, I do not need to make any change. I helped them, taking into account their attempts, but using modernized and working syntax, without too much complication (and in msot case sthisi s simpler than their attempts: this is the case on the user page that you just reverted, using ugly syntax that is much harder to maintain than what I used, which allows user to focus on working their own content, and add further info if they need, beside just the location box, babelboxes and user boxes).

So I respect their contents, their prefered colors (or fonts as long as this is working), and make sure that other contents generated by template will not limit what other things they want on their user page without using old or ugly tricks (many users do not know the HTML/CSS/mediawiki code rules and tricks; Mediawiki makes some efforts to make it work, but this has price and unexpected effects if there are contents to add/modify/remove later: maintenance is more difficult, so users stop updating their user pages that progressively get low value and are left unused).

Verdy p (talk)04:17, 6 October 2022

If I change someone else's user page, it is only to do routine maintenance, like removing deleted templates or fixing syntax errors. I don't completely change how the user page looks according to my personal preference. Please let other users decide for themselves how they want their user page to be.

Jon Harald Søby (talk)16:28, 7 October 2022