If you have a Log-In, you have a user page. It's a basic page that you can use to give other editors some information about the people working on the A*G Wiki.
Personalization[]
You are free to personalize your pages as you wish within limits such as placing limited amounts of personal pictures, links to websites/blogs/social media used, online communities within limits, or other things about how you came to the project/topic and what you seek to focus on and help with. The only exception to this is creating or simulating user boxes (which we do not use here) and the use of in-page headlining images as this breaks the display on the Wiki.
Do not use article headlining images in personal pages, as it breaks the image on actual article pages when searched; these will be removed from personal pages when detected.
Users may have a maximum of three (3) personal images uploaded that are used exclusively on their user page. All other images will be deleted.
Privatization[]
Your page is personal but it is not your own.
While you may personalize your page as you see fit, understand that the page does not belong to you and you alone. The AG Wiki is an open project, and that includes your user page; however, no one but you may add to it, and no one other than content moderators or admin will interfere.
Content moderators and/or admin can and will clean up your page if it's devolving into natter, long listicals, rants, extended image galleries, or anything better suited to a blog or personal space away from here. Furthermore, edits to pages by admin are done to keep pages neat.
As long as edits to your page from admin are in good faith and helpful, they will be left to stay. Edits from others will be warned.
Discouraged Information[]
Realize that user pages and avatars are open to the entire internet. They aren't like message boards, where there is private messaging or sometimes locked boards, or social media that can be privatized. Do not put any information on your user page that you would not put on the internet for anyone to freely take or know. This includes but is not limited to:
- Full / Legal Name
- Full photos of self and/or others
- Personal Contact Information
- School / Work Locations
- Family and/or Friend's Names and Information
- Activities / Information that Would Locate or Embarrass You
- Personal Health / Mental Health Information
- Age or Birthday (if you explicitly state you are under 13, or imply that you might be under 13, this is grounds for getting blocked due to violating Fandom Terms of Use as well the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act)
If you wouldn't put it up in Times Square for everyone to read and disseminate, don't put it on your user page. Being anonymous and keeping a low profile especially in a public venue like the Internet does wonders. It's for your own good, trust us.
Userboxes[]
Userboxes are actively discouraged from this wiki project. On Wikipedia they're used more for helping people collaborate on projects--but as we don't have any active projects, we don't need these. They'd be the equivalent of fan banners, which encourages contributors to play too much with their own pages instead of helping with the project. The motivation of this project isn't to show what you're a fan of. It's to help get out information about American Girl and their characters and products.
Do not request userboxes on admin pages; they aren't going to be added. Simulated userboxes will be removed from pages at detection.
Inactive Users[]
Users with no editing contributions after twelve (12) consecutive months are considered inactive. While there is currently no tag on an inactive user's page, they should return with focus on the project and not their personal page. Should they return and primarily focus on personal user pages, they will be warned once.
Excessive User Page Editing[]
Your User Page is not your primary contribution to this wiki. Let Admin repeat that. Your User Page is not your primary contribution to this wiki.
Your user page is meant to give some some light information about yourself, explain your aid to the project or highlight work you've done, and organize contributions to the AG Wiki. Lists of dolls, personal connection to American Girl, and a few select favorite characters are fine. But your user page is primarily to help contribute to the project, not put a spotlight on yourself.
If your first edit is to immediately promote offsite spaces or personal promotion, the page will be wiped and the user will be warned to contribute to the project.
The AG Wiki is not a host for a personal homepage, free real estate for advertising one's social media, a blogging location, or a fandom hub. Long biographies about your personal life in detail, lists of every item you have and/or when you got them, every book you own and your reviews on them, every character personally ranked, or every item in your personal wish list (for some but not all examples of issues) are natter and not actively contributing to the informational topic at hand. Nor is constant editing of your personal page to update every new doll you have or every thought you have on a release or to tell us more personal details about yourself. None of this is helpful to our goals. If this is what you want to talk about, leave and get a blog.
Editing your user page repeatedly without assisting with other articles--and doing it properly, not one-and-two small edits or incorrect information just to say you did something--is doing nothing.
Excessive user page editing is defined here as a ratio of more than ten edits to a user's page (not including quick correction edits or typo fixes, or within a reasonable span of time) paired with less than ninety good faith, useful project edits; these can be seen and tallied under a user's contributions. Basically, if over 10% of your edits at any given time are to your personal page, you're not helping us out; this is our 90-10 Rule. (And no, it has nothing to do with college funds.) It's not hard and fast, but it will be considered heavily on edit count for warnings and redirection. So for example, you're probably all right if you spent a day cleaning up or updating your user page for an hour after a week of steady edits, but if you've been here two months, only made forty edits, and fifteen of them are you updating your user page for the past week? You'll be tapped and warned. This also counts for length and quality of edits. For example if a user takes the time to do a long summary of a book or multiple page work on character pages, they're likely fine--but a smattering of typo, formatting/spacing tweaks, or grammar fixes followed by long splays of your checklists is not. Admin judgement is final.
The limits will not be held against new users who will be given a week to establish a user page. However, any returning/previously inactive users are expected to perform no less than thirty good faith contributing edits according to our guidelines before focusing heavily on their personal page.
Warnings, Blocks, Edits and User Page Locks[]
All data on pages is as subject to our content rules as any other page including all policies against bigotry, fan fiction, and false information, rumors, and hearsay--along with all consequences for misuse.
Anyone not at least at level of content creator editing another user's page will be blocked on first offense for a minimum of two weeks.
First-time edits to personal pages that focus on personal advertisement (such as blogs, social media, articles, etc.) before any project edits will have advertisements removed by admin and page will be edited by admin to request project work.
If admin detects that a user is editing their personal page in such a way that they are doing more personal focus rather than contributing to the project (or an inactive user returns after a span of a year or more with no contributions to the project and only focuses on their user page) user will be warned once to contribute properly to the project.
If one's user page continue to be focused on rather than the primary project needs, the user page will be temporarily protected for a minimum of a month to encourage user to focus on the project. The time can be removed and the page unprotected after at least twenty good faith contributing edits have been made for at least a month (both obligations must be fulfilled), but a block can be placed again and time extended if they fail to contribute again.
Continued failures to contribute to the project needs will result in longer page locks and possible temporary blocks of the user.