Tardis talk:Bad uses for user pages

Penalties for violation

On this page, the section "Penalties for violation" states that...

"When you make your first edit with us, your user page is automatically created with a link to this series of policy pages. You are therefore deemed to have been adequately notified of the kinds of things that you're prohibited from putting on your user pages. Consequently, admin are under no obligation to give you further warning before blocking you from further editing, and it is entirely up to the discretion of the blocking administrator how long your ban will last."T:BAD

This has been outdated since 2020. When new users make their first edits, they do not get their user pages created with a link to this series of policy pages, the bot broke in November 2020 (I suspect the move to UCP did it), and it is entirely unfair to assume that users know all of the user page policies.

Additionally, even if the bot still worked, it would still be unfair to assume all users are familiar with these policies. A month or two back, I embedded a "Weird" Al clip on my user page using some code, not knowing about T:USER BAD, and it stood unconstested, despite it technically being against policy. I know for a fact that my user page will have been visited by many Admins in that time, and none of them noticed that what I had done was against policy. So it is pretty clear that even if that Admins are not familiar with every policy on the site (especially as we are all volunteers, we don't have the time to memorise dozens of hard-to-find policies), then it should not be expected for users to memorise them either.

Therefore, I propose the section of policy I quoted to be revised in light of these facts. The mention of the user page being created should be entirely removed, as well as the unfair expectation for all users to have memorised every user page policy, and that Admins should be obligated to give further warnings. Finally, perhaps it may also be fair to be less strict with the bans, considering most new users won't be familiar with these policies.

(Also, I'd like to point out that I removed the embedded video off my user page as soon as I found out about this policy, which is entirely fair, although it should be stated how I embedded it was not against T:VID as currently outlined.)

Epsilon📯 📂

14:37, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out: the bot being out-of-order naturally changes things, and the passage has been updated in that light.

When it comes to the hypothetical situation of users not knowing the policies even if they'd had the links, what you are proposing would set a dubious precedent. Being warned about the policy is being warned about the policy. Mistakes that are nevertheless clearly innocent are covered by the existing part of the policy which leaves admin discretion on actions to take, without needing to enshrine a potentially dangerous precedent in policy. This is in any case a moot point until something similar to the old bot actually becomes functional again. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:41, 27 June 2022 (UTC)