MarioWiki:Userspace

The Super Mario Wiki provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in the project. If your username is JohnDoe:
 * Your user page is the page at "User:JohnDoe"
 * Your user talk page is the page at "User talk:JohnDoe"
 * Your user subpages are any pages at "User:JohnDoe/subpage" or "User talk:JohnDoe/subpage" (see below)
 * Your userspace is the collection of all the above.

Details about you shouldn't go in the main namespace, which is reserved for Mario content.

What can I have on my user page?
A good start is to add a little information about yourself, how old you are, where you're from, your favorite Mario games, your areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, other homepages, and so forth. Obviously, this will depend on how comfortable you are with respect to privacy. Userbox towers are a favorite method of communicating the basic facts about yourself, although you should be careful not to go overboard with the amount of boxes you use. Many users also include quotes, links to their favorite articles and image galleries. However, like the userboxes, be careful not to spend too much time building up these sorts of repositories. User pages are fun, but your focus should always be editing the wiki, not your userspace.

If you want, you can let people know about your activities and goals on the wiki: you might include current plans, recent activities or notable accomplishments. If you're going away or won't be editing the wiki very much, you might drop a note on your user page to that effect. You can also use your userspace to help you edit the Super Mario Wiki more effectively: you can use it to list useful links or features, make a "to do" list for yourself, or even draft new pages, policies or templates.

You are allowed four personal images for your userspace. Please do not abuse this privilege. See Personal images for more information.

What can I have on my user talk page?
Your user talk page is for other users to discuss matters related to the Wiki with you. You can also have casual conversations with your friends here, but remember to keep editing the articles as well. In general, your contributions to your user talk page should be in response to other people's comments - avoid stuff that would be better placed on your user page. You can archive your user talk page when it gets large and hard to navigate, but you cannot remove conversations or comments, unless they are acts of vandalism or trolling.

The proper way to archive is by moving the entire talk page to an archive subpage (i.e. moving "User talk:JohnDoe" to "User talk:JohnDoe/Archive 1"); please note that the archive must still be a talk page, so moving to a main userspace subpage like "User:JohnDoe/Archive 1" would not be allowed. Moving the page carries over the editing history of the talk page along with the content, making it easier to go back and find specific changes made to the page. Simply cutting and pasting the text into newly created archive subpages is allowed too, as long as the archiving is done in big, periodic chunks. However, archiving too frequently or archiving individual sections immediately after every conversation ends should be avoided, as this causes unnecessary edits and seriously breaks up the page history, making it harder to find old edits. Also, once you've archived your talk page, no one, including you, should edit the archive except for occasional maintenance work or other extraneous circumstances that absolutely require modifications to be made. Some users have their archives protected, however this is dissuaded since it can prevent legitimate maintenance work from being conducted (not even by the archive's owner, unless they are an admin), and erroneous or malicious talk pages edits are infrequent and easy to revert anyway.

You must link to all your user talk page archives at the top of your current talk page. Many users use navigation templates for this, which are then included on the individual archives as well. You can also have a brief statement or status update at the top of your talk page, and while your userspace has to follow the rules of the wiki (i.e. no flaming or spamming), you're allowed to set more house rules that you wish others to follow on your talk page. These rules have to be reasonable, however, and if someone doesn't obey them, unless they are clearly doing so to be malicious towards you (which would infringe on the courtesy policy), they can't be officially reprimanded.

What about user subpages?
Users may create the following types of subpages:


 * A signature (Please note that you must post a signature, a link or the generic template, rather than posting raw coding onto pages. You are only allowed one signature subpage. For more information, see Signatures.)
 * Archives of user talk pages (See above.)
 * A navigation template for the talk page archives (This can only be made if it's used on all the archives; if you only want to put the directory on your current page, just build it right into your talk page, rather than creating a whole separate template.)
 * Subpages that serve the wiki (These can include drafts for proposals, test templates, and miscellaneous works in progress.)
 * A status page (Like the archive template, this should only be made if it's meant to be used on multiple pages; if it's only going to go on the user page or the user talk page, just build the message into the page itself.)
 * A custom monobook

The following uses are NOT allowed, and will be deleted if created:


 * Custom welcome templates (These were allowed in the past and remain intact so as not to disturb talk pages, but new ones should not be created; instead use our default template if you wish to welcome users.)
 * Custom reminder and warning templates (These include any subpages which contain a pre-written reminder message, with the intention of issuing it to users. Please use the official user notice templates instead, where applicable. Or just write informal reminder messages individually as you issue them.)
 * Pages that are just meant to be transcluded onto another page (I.e. a status update that only goes on one page, a subpage that just contains the userbox tower, or some other component of the user page: just put the content on the page directly. If you find that it makes your user page too cluttered, consider lessening the amount of content.)
 * Archives of deleted content (If something you want to keep is being deleted, save it on your computer - it has no place here anymore.)
 * Pages that do not serve the Super Mario Wiki (I.e. fiction, opinion pieces, polls, sign-up sheets, additional information about yourself, etc.: please restrict these sorts of user-content to your main user page. When in doubt, ask an admin, or simply err on the side of caution and do not create a new subpage.)

What should I avoid?
Generally, you should avoid any substantial content that is unrelated to the Super Mario Wiki. Examples include:


 * A weblog relating your non-Super Mario Wiki activities
 * Guestbooks
 * Opinion pieces or lengthy discussions not related to the Super Mario Wiki, and any other non-encyclopedic material
 * Excessive personal information
 * Works of fiction
 * Fake businesses (stores/shops, etc.)
 * Communications with people uninvolved with the Super Mario Wiki (aside from using it to talk to you)
 * Any illegal game links (such as ROMs)
 * Flaming or defamation of other users
 * Excessive swearing
 * Custom formatting that interferes with the basic appearance of the wiki (i.e. you can change the background colour, but you can't hide the sidebar or editing tabs)
 * Mainspace templates (while you can't post actual templates, you can copy the codes of things like infoboxes and repurpose them for your page; warning templates may not be copied, however)
 * Fake "New Messages" boxes (see proposal) or other unnecessary distractions (use your discretion)
 * Fake Warnings. Issuing a, , or any other official notice template to someone as a joke is considered an abuse of warning privileges and can get you in actual trouble. As mentioned above, even customizing the template coding into a clearly bogus warning is not allowed: it's too much of a distraction, and there is no good reason to do it. Don't give yourself fake warnings either.
 * Spam. Posting massive amounts of mindless text, images, or fake templates on your own or another user's talk page is unnecessarily disruptive and wastes space. Going around posting the same generic message (especially solicitations, which is itself disallowed) may also be viewed as a form of spamming, especially if you're contacting long-retired users and people you otherwise don't know.
 * Excessive YouTube videos. There is no need to embed numerous videos on your user page, and doing so can easily crash other users' computers. You can embed a couple videos, but any more than six is getting excessive, and it would be better to just link to them.

In general, if you have material that you do not wish for others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for the Super Mario Wiki, it should be placed on a personal web site. Many free and low-cost web hosting services are available to serve such needs, and are a good alternative for content unrelated to the wiki.

Community-building activities that are not strictly "on topic" may be allowed, especially when initiated by committed users with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the encyclopedia. However, some users become addicted to the community aspect, and it is up to the good contributors to get them back on track and editing the articles once more. If a user is making too many userspace edits and not actually editing the mainspace, we have a specific warning template that can be issued to them. Users who ignore this gentle reminder will be subject to stronger warnings and eventually, punitive action such as having their user page protected from editing or finding themselves temporarily blocked from editing at all if talking to other users is the problem.

In addition, under no circumstances are you permitted to obscure any of our three advertisement boxes.

I just joined and I can't create my user page. Why?
A new user has to be a member of the wiki for at least four days and make at least five edits before they can create pages, including their own user page. After you have fulfilled both requirements, you will become autoconfirmed and will be able to create and edit your user page. More information about autoconfirmation can be found here.

Ownership and editing of pages in the userspace
As a tradition, the Super Mario Wiki offers wide latitude to users to manage their userspace as they see fit. However, pages in userspace still belong to the community:


 * Contributions should always respect the copyrights of Nintendo.
 * Community policies apply to your userspace just as they do elsewhere.
 * In some cases, material that does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed.

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 of the Super Mario Wiki can also, at the bottom of the page (or in the sidebar), click "User contributions" to see what contributions you have made to the wiki over time.

Visitors to your user page can also click "E-mail this user" if you have opted in your preferences to be able to send and receive email.