Halopedia:Userspace

Halopedia 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 user space is the collection of all the above.

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

What can I have on my user page?

A good start is to add a little information about yourself, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, your real name, your location, information about 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.

You can also use your user page to help you use Halopedia more effectively: so you can use it to list "to do" information, work in progress, reminders, useful links, and so forth. It's also good for experimenting with markup (a personal Sandbox).

Another use is to let people know about your activities and opinions on the Wiki. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities on the Wiki, and your opinions on how certain Wiki articles or policies should be changed. If you won't be editing the Wiki for a while, you might drop a note on your user page to that effect.

You might want to add quotes you like, or some of your favorite Wiki articles or images, or other things of this nature.

You are allowed four personal images for your user space. Please do not abuse this privilege. See Halopedia:Personal Image Policy 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. As your user talk page becomes larger, you may choose to delete or summarize old discussion, as you feel appropriate. Please avoid deleting discussion merely because it is critical of your actions - doing so will only make people repeat the same criticism, and will make you seem like you are ignoring criticism. Many users have taken to archiving old talks on sub pages. This is generally considered the "norm."

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.

What about user subpages?

If absolutely necessary, you can create subpages.

Examples:

• your signature
• a work in progress, until it is ready to be released (e.g.: User:JohnDoe/Work)
• archives of user talk
• tests; for testing a template, make it a separate subpage (e.g.: User:JohnDoe/Test)

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

• archives of already deleted pages
• pages that do not serve Halopedia (e.g.: a page with random nothingness on it)

What should I avoid?

Generally, you should avoid any substantial content that is unrelated to Halopedia. Examples include:

• A weblog relating your non-Halopedia activities
• Guestbooks
• Discussion not related to Halopedia
• Excessive personal information
• Opinion pieces not related to Halopedia or other non-encyclopedic material
• Communications with people uninvolved with Halopedia
• Any illegal game links (such as ROMs)

Free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a good alternative for content unrelated to the Wiki.

Particularly, 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. Some users may become addicted to the community aspect. It is up to the good contributors to bring them back on track.

Ownership and editing of pages in the user space

As a tradition, Halopedia offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit. However, pages in user space still do belong to the community:

• Contributions should always respect the copyrights of Microsoft.
• Community policies apply to your user space just as they do elsewhere.
• In some cases, material that does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed (see below).

In general, if you have material that you do not wish for others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for Halopedia, it should be placed on a personal web site. Many free and low-cost web hosting services are available to serve such needs. Google Sites is a nice free hosting service you may wish to check out for things of this nature.

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 at Halopedia 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.