Template talk:User Data

How do you...

How do you get the certain sections to disappear if there's nothing defined for the parameter? -Moe 17:27, 17 November 2006 (CST)

You don't have to define the parameter -- or even add the parameter to the template -- in order for it not to appear. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 18:10, 17 November 2006 (CST)

You mean how we do it technically? Every row in the table has something like:

class="hiddenStructure{{{marital status|}}}"

If you have martial status=married, that expands to:

class="hiddenStructuremarried"

Which is of course a bogus class. But if you leave married undefined, it expands to:

class="hiddenStructure"

Which makes it disappear. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:08, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

New fields proposal

I've implemented some new fields for this template in my testing area:

• born_date, born_month and born_year were ripped from {{Cast Data}}. If one or more of these fields is filled in, a Date of birth field will appear in the table. If all three are filled in, the user's age will be calculated, which overrides the user-specified value for age, which is only used if one of the three born_* fields is missing. (Note to Shane: I also fixed a minor comma issue: born_day=25; born_month=11; born_year=; renders "November 25," in {{Cast Data}}, but the comma obviously shouldn't be there. Maybe you can implement my fix in {{Cast Data}}.)
• showEC: if set, the user's edit count will be displayed and linked to the relevant Special:Editcount breakdown. Idea by Mercifull. Note that my testing area doesn't display this correctly, since it's on a subpage. My main user page does get it right, though.

So tell me what you think. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:08, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

I like them :) --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 12:00, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

I also added a timezone field. Doesn't do any magic, but it can be useful. We might also want to list admins' timezones on BW:AN. Also, I want to emphasize that this change won't break any user pages; it's fully backwards compatible. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:58, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Looks good to me. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 16:00, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

The new parameters (born_day, born_month, born_year, timezone and showEC) are now available. I've looked at a couple of user pages and they weren't broken, but if my new template breaks yours anyway, please report it here or on my talk page. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 06:34, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Once again, we have two new fields: sex and femalecat. The former is just another field in the table, while the latter adds you to Category:Female Wikipedians. Tell me what you think. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:41, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

I dont like the specific female cat option. It should just be "ShowSexCat" or something which if theres a Y in there it addss you to the relevant category, either male or female, just like the country code does. --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 04:33, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

That would be better. I'll start coding it rightaway. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 04:58, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

It's done. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 05:15, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

The fields sex and nosexcat have been renamed to gender and nogendercat respectively, on Joe's request. sex and nosexcat still work, though. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:49, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

I am going t remove sex and nosex at all. It's shouldn't be there. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 06:29, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Vacation field

I've designed two more fields:

• vacation: Set to Y if you're on vacation. This will display a "This user is on vacation" message right underneath your photo.
• vacationid: Name of the section or ID of the {{message box}} that elaborates on your vacation. If unspecified, the words "on vacation" won't be linked.

These params can be seen in action in testing area, and will be used on my user page from May 11 to May 18, when I'm going on a vacation myself (that's why I designed this thing in the first place).

So tell me if you like it. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:45, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

I have now incorporated these fields under the names away and awayid. A demonstration of what the away message looks like and how the awayid parameter works can be found here. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:34, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

Cylon=y

Why not? For those who'd admit their Cylonity, i.e. Cylon Wikipedians. DrWho42 22:47, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

That's a bit too wanky, isn't it? The "rank" field is bad enough. SMcCandlish 16:29, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

Overcat bug

This template overcategorizes, by adding people to Category:Galactipedian even if they also appear in one of the gender and/or national subcategories thereof.

This is done by design. You can not have those categories not show up by filling out the fields for exclusion. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 18:10, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

I think I may have been misunderstood. The point was that if someone IS in (i.e. not excluding) the more narrow categories, there is no point to the person being listed in the larger encompassing category, since they are already in the subcategories. To exaggerate to make the point clearer, it would be like having a Wikipedia category called "People" with over a million articles in it, instead of (or, rather, in addition to) more narrow subcategories like "German pool players". SMcCandlish 22:40, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

We know that Wikipedia doesn't overcat, but we do. Cylon Raider (RDM), for instance, is in the Cylon Craft (RDM), Cylons (RDM), Cylon Craft, Cylon, RDM and A to Z cats (and even more), whereas in the Wikipedia scheme, Cylon Craft (RDM) would imply all others I listed. Since we consequently do this with articles, we also do it with user pages. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:23, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Best to check out BW:SAC Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 11:37, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Ah, okay, I missed that point. Sorry for the false alarm! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:31, 28 September 2007 (CDT)

Privacy consequences

The e-mail address and birth date categories should be removed (e-mail, gmail, and any of the IM options that also equate to e-mail addresses at those service providers), as the addresses can be harvested by spammers (and the system already has a built-in safe e-mailing feature to begin with), and the full birth date information is simply too revealing and could become an identity theft vector, especially since real names are also made available by many users, too many of whom (especially kids) are not aware of the privacy consequences of being so revealing on wide open public forums. Also, the COPPA law (US) probably legslly restricts this site from revealing any such information about minors under 13 to begin with, which could be a liability issue (not to mention it encourages "cruising" by online pedophiles). SMcCandlish 16:37, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

Use of the template is voluntary. And if you use the template, all the fields are voluntary. You don't have to fill every one of them out; you can cherry pick. If you look at it, no one needs to fill out anything on their user page. We're not like Citizendium where you have to have a biography on your userpage. There's neither a policy nor anyone here who forces you to use the template, it's a choice. You do or you don't.

In regard to the issues of e-mail harvesting... by simply linking to Special:Emailuser in your e-mail field, you circumvent the problem of harvesters.

Regarding COPPA, I'll dig through the userpages that use this template to see if anyone is under the age of 13. Though in my experience all the users who use the template (with the real names and birth dates) are well over the age of 13. And if there are uses under age 13, they haven't revealed their age or their personal information. (Also Shane, myself, and other higher ups on the Wiki have discussed the issue of COPPA before privately, so we're aware of it. Basically, the consensus was that we should be knowledgeable of it and be vigilant for underage users who willingly give out their information.)

On a similar tangent, there's nothing stopping anyone from revealing all the information in the infobox in a biographical blurb either. Although I will agree that we should probably notify users about the issues surrounding revealing their identities and age online. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 17:40, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

That the fields are voluntary wasn't the point, which rather was that the over-disclosing nature of some of the fields will be lost on naive users, who may suffer ill effects as a result. That Special:Emailuser can be used in the e-mail field isn't documented, so many users won't do it, and it still renders the field redundant, with the e-mail feature itself which appears in the left menus on the user pages of those who have turned the feature; or at very least the template field's documentation should advise using Special:Emailuser there, and should warn against putting bare e-mail addresses in such fields. As for COPPA, I wasn't meaning to be alarmist; just saying that the potential headache of such fields probably outweighs the benefits. Many people, including kids, will just fill them in because they are asked for, instead of thinking about it very deeply. Most wikis do not ask for such information in basic user templates, so it just kind of seems out-of-place here. While there's nothing stopping someone from just manually adding such info to their user page, or using little userboxes to do so, it seems likely that the extra work required to do this would cause more reflection. PS: Other fields seem not disconcerting but simply pointless, like how many siblings one has or (?!?) how many parents (I can't think of anyone I've ever heard of with less, or more, than two sets of chromosomes from two parental sources.) I.e., there's some really silly cruft in this thing.  :-) Maybe my perspective is "too" Wikipedian, but if it doesn't help editing collaboration, it doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose. PPS: The fact that the template asks about parents and siblings suggests strongly to me (re: COPPA, above) that there are in fact kids involved in this project (who else would think such questions were relevant on a wiki of this nature?), despite the somewhat mature nature of the show. SMcCandlish 22:53, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

I agree that it should be better documented. Not much of an issue there. As for the fields themselves, the User Data template is, in fact, based off of the Character Data template used in the character's articles. Actually, it started life as a copy-and-pasted version of that template, so that's where those "siblings" and "children" fields come from. There are two reasons for that development: 1) the Character Data template was being used on the user pages and 2) as such, it was easier to use the Character Data infobox as a guide for a User Data version than to build one from scratch. ;-) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 22:59, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

Ah. Would it be objectionable to remove the cruft? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:26, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

Well, problem is that most people use those two fields you mentioned. However, I do think that a general template reorganization may be in order. Let's wait to see what other people's thoughts are before undertaking such changes. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 23:38, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

I agree that the parents and siblings fields should go. Those are obvious and silly left-overs from the character template. But it should be possible to fix this. Aren't incorrect fields simply not displayed? So removing them from the template wouldn't break pages that use the field. A note about the danger of data miners and that the use of the Wiki email thingy is recommended is no problem either. --Serenity 02:26, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Right; fields that don't match up with any code looking for them are simply ignored. No problem at all. PS: If most people really do use those two fields, then this supports my concern that people fill a bunch of them in reflexively because they think they are supposed to, whether the docs label them optional or not (this also relates to Shane's 02:29, 27 September 2007 (CDT) comment below). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:53, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

We can always change the email field to a Y for showing the "Click Here" for Special:EmailUser/Namehere and N not to show it. That's the only change I would make. Everything else is pretty much optionial, hence it being under the Optional documentation header. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 02:29, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

That Y/N thing would work well. As for the rest, I've noted above (in Beaudoin/Serenity sub-thread) that evidence seems to suggest they aren't being treated as optional. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:53, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Maybe I will trim down the "paste code". That should reduce it. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 04:15, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Looks better. :) Another silly thing with the parents field is that it's explained as "how many parents". In the character data template it's for who the parents are. Obviously that's not of interest in user data. --Serenity 06:09, 27 September 2007 (CDT)