# Did you ever edit another user page than "yours" ?

This learning project starts with the question:
    Did you ever edit another user page than "yours" on any wikimedia project ?

## Next steps

This is a draft version - please extend it, see background info here
* check here who else uses the Template:Edit page
* make a survey, e.g. using Wikimedian Demographics
* publish results
* initiate "other" actions (whatever this might be)
* please add more

## reasons which might have played a role in your behaviour
### when answering with: yes

* See also: Wikiversity:Be bold. There is no mine or yours here in wiki-verse : it is all ours (Mediawiki software offers when creating a new page for everyone the "edit this page"-button). See also Rousseau's quote about fences ("The first man who...") here
* I like it:
   * It is easier editing other users pages than to accept that someone edits ones user page. Because that involves that you are able to handle e.g. critiques.
   * I am a v.nd.l
* makes wiki life interesting, fosters contact with other Wikiversity participants
* I am offering a "service": reverting vandalism, fixing typos and/or links
* I am trying to contact an old friend who works for The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).
* please add more

### when answering with: no

* I recognize that another person has organised "their" user page in this way, which they find appropriate.
* If I don't understand or disagree with something (because it is not finally developped yet), I would bring it up on their talk page. Editing it to reflect my view would simply be provocative. "merciless editing" would perhaps scare off that user.
* I never thought of it - perhaps it is a boundary which I set myself though technically it is possible in a wiki ? (Mediawiki enables the "edit this page"-button right from the begin.)
* On the other wikimedia projects this is also not done and I just assumed that here it is the same ?
* I don't care about other user pages
* please add more

### when answering with: yes and no

* Editing seem to be not a question of ownership but of knowledge/meaning/intent. If something is put on a page, which can be read by everybody, then there cannot be any 'ownership', indicating that its use is depending on the author, claimed. Another question is: who is more valuable to learning? The person who has something to teach or the one who is editing?
    Yes: if two or more people are on the same level (knowledge) of developing a subject then it could be a great shortcut to simply edit, overwrite, the subject, than to debate it before, because this would be like a debate with an immediate outcome.
    No: Since the situation described under 'yes' is very rare it is very advisable to 'discuss' the change, between the want to be editor and the author, before it is done and not after. Specifically if somebody just uses editing to be bold/criticise/disagree, and then, the usually most knowledgable person of the subject - the author, has to 'fight' (get other opinions) before he can 'reverse edit' to the original meaning.
* Anyone could see that a user page would ever really designate an alternative decision to even simply do as much more.
* please add more

## other questions

* To whom does a user page belong ?
* IP user pages
   * Is the perception on IP user pages different than "normal" user pages ? If so, why ?
   * IP user pages are shared by different users - why not "normal" user pages ?
* What other pages could be brought to attention ?
* Might a page of a fictional user e.g., User:WikiversityJack be more likely to be edited by other users? I find this to be a rather strange, but interesting page. -- Jtneill - Talk 00:21, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
* After a user page "owner" leaves us (R.I.P. Mirwin) who takes care of the user page, who visits it, brings flowers, who thinks of the user ... ? Is life after death possible ?
* please add more

## see also

* Template:Edit page
* Wikiversity:Page protection
* Managing vandalism