Forum:Question about user pages

Why are user pages treated like articles- why can anyone edit a person's user page, instead of that user himself? Can't we just have each user having the right to only be able to edit his profile, just like Wikipedia? After all, if people could edit other users' profiles, too many counter-productive edits are going to appear. --Thenewguy34( Other ) 13:10, June 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * There's the threat of vandalism or inappropriate content, especially of wikis whose admins are inactive. 13:15, June 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree, the reasons I don't like it are:


 * Vandalism on Wikis is easy to undo
 * Most userpages aren't vandalised, or aren't vandalised very often for it to be a significant problem
 * It teaches users that any page is able to edit on a wiki, even ones that might not be socially acceptable to edit, this is the spirit of a wiki
 * Many users want people to edit their userpage, or other pages in their userspace, due to having a guestbook, etc
 * Users could add malicious content to their userpage that users can't remove, and have to wait for admins (-TK-999 said this above)
 * --  Random Time  13:17, June 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * Whats a guestbook? — ¤ U LTIMATE S UPREME ¤ (T@lk) 14:27, June 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * Example --  Random Time  14:52, June 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * You mean the Userboxes? — ¤ U LTIMATE S UPREME ¤ (T@lk) 15:04, June 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * No, where people have signed the userpage --  Random Time  15:08, June 16, 2012 (UTC)

Not that it really matters -- because the fact of the matter is that people being able to edit userpages likely won't change -- but I share the opinion that user pages should be not be able to be edited by anyone except the owner. Malicious content on userpages is not a concern, because they can't put javascript that affects viewers there. And in the case of guestbooks and the like: put them in the Template or Project namespace and transclude them, problem solved. Really, there is no reason for userpages to be edited by others other than to propagate the supposed wiki philosophy that everything can be edited -- this just isn't the case.

For example, the MediaWiki namespace can only be edited by admins. Message Wall posts and personal data such as signatures in Special:Preferences cannot be edited by others either. In the case of the MediaWiki namespace, the reason to is protect against malicious code. For Message Wall posts (I would add userpages to this category), it's a good preventative measure against vandalism, and it preserves personal, not community content. You wouldn't want just anybody to edit your facebook profile. This prohibition should be shared by wikis. If someone wants others to edit their personal content, they should be forced to opt-in by putting it outside of the user namespace.
 * But what if someone uses his/her own userpage to post spam, pornography or miscellanea? From what I have seen, user pages are preferred by spammers. 18:11, June 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * 1) Then don't look at that person's userpage. It's not like anyone is forcing viewers to watch things. 2) Make it so that edits to userpages are hidden in WikiActivity and RecentChanges by default -- with a flag to view them, just like bot edits. 3) Alert local admins so that they can clean it up. If there are no local admins, contact staff.