Board Thread:Support Requests - Community Management/@comment-452-20140617222146/@comment-452-20140617225920

I've never had any issues with people solely uploading images for their userpages, but I can see how that could be a problem. Wikia's "Not an image repository" rule covers that pretty well. I know a few people who like to add images to their user pages, but they have also been good contributors of articles images. Some even asked if they were allowed, I told them to go right ahead, and created a "Non-article Files" category to keep track of any images only intended for user pages use, and use a special "Unused Files" DPL template to find files not in that category which aren't used in the main namespace.

When I first started editing, I maintained a gallery of all the images I had uploaded, but I soon realised that was silly, and ultimately unsustainable. Plus, I discovered other ways of keeping track of my uploads.


 * template it shouldn't use

Now that you mention it, that's also an issue I have encountered before. Some people like to use article templates on their user pages. I kinda wish they wouldn't, but I decided to just modify the templates to not include categories outside of the main namespace rather than remove them.

A related issue is "User Boxes" which some wikis use - you know, the "This user likes ice-cream" things? - I don't personally use them, but rather than create dozens of individual User Box templates, I set up a user box template which allows them to specify an image and a quote instead.

For what it's worth, Staff have indicated that "Admins have the right to summarily delete user pages on a whim", so there's really no right or wrong answer. :)