Wikiversity talk:Userboxes

From a quote from Jimmy Wales, re-posted to the Colloquium:


 * "Wikipedia is not a place to assess the morality of a person, their beliefs or their orientation, neither is it the place to advocate for or against a political or religious point of view."

Ok, so that's Wikipedia. And neither would Wikiversity be a place for the latter part (ie advocating particular views). But as for the former part (ie. assessing people's moralities etc), I think this is something that could well have a place in Wikiversity. In particular, with reference to Disclosures, we will need to occasionally determine how someone's 'background' affects their take on a particular topic/discussion/activity. As ridiculous and superfluous as many of the userboxes are on Wikipedia (IMO), they would (mostly) probably do not much harm on Wikiversity, and perhaps be quite beneficial. Thoughts? Cormaggio talk 15:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a big difference between having a userbox that says, "religion X rules" or "political party Y kicks ass" and userboxes that say "I participate at the Theology content improvement project" or "Active member of the School of Political Science". Userboxes should be fairly general and "impersonal" and suitable for use by many people. If Wikiversity participants want to describe their personal background and thoughts in more detail they can do so on their user page without making a template. --JWSchmidt 17:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Knowledge userboxes
The knowledge userboxes leave out an entire category! What about people who have been professionally trained in a field but who do not work in it professionally? For example, what about a professional photographer who is not a "hobbyist", but neither is an educator, or a professional editor who clearly has professional training in English, but yet lacks any sort of formal teaching credentials (and does not teach)? It seems like the current level 3 should maybe be level 4, and a new level should be introduced that covers non-educator professionals. The Jade Knight 11:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, no one is responding. I'm going to go ahead and add a fourth category if no one responds again.  I hope no one hates me for screwing up the whole system…  The Jade Knight 23:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Please feel welcome to go ahead and extend the system! --McCormack 04:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok. I'll get started.  Eventually, all of the 3 boxes will need to be updated, and all of the 4 userboxes will need to be created.  The idea is 1 = Interested; 2 = Hobbyist (not changing these two); 3 = "Professional"; ie, someone with a degree or who works in a related field; 4 = Educator.  The Jade Knight 06:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Great. --McCormack 06:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Man. These templates have templates nested within templates within them.  This should at least make it easier to update them all.  Kind of a pain to figure out how to make a new one, though.  (I'm working on it.)  The Jade Knight 06:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hrm. I think I updated what I needed to, but it doesn't seem to have changed any of the other templates.  Is this a caching issue?  The Jade Knight 07:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Finally figured it out. There was another template hidden away involving the text.  Tricksy.  The Jade Knight 08:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Missing userboxes
What about UK english? There are also some userboxes existing that are missing levels --Unionhawk 00:10, 3 April 2007 (UTC)