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Wikipedians (people who edit Wikipedia articles) have profile pages called User Pages, these pages are often littered with colorful boxes, called Userboxes. Most Wikipedians use their Userboxes as a way to tell inside jokes about Wikipedia. Although they started out on a much more serious note: to denote the fluency of languages spoken by Wikipedians.
These userboxes are no longer bound to purely funcional uses. Wikipedians have started using them to display their interests.
I personally first encountered Userboxes a couple months ago, when I first started doing the occational Wikipedia edit. I was quite amazed that there is a hidden social network of people's interests on this website that I've been using for the past 10 years.
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Userboxes started off initially as a way to communicate across multiple languages in Wikipedia, they were originally named Babel templates, after the Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel is a story from the Old Testament, where people are trying to build a Tower to heaven, but God punishes them and makes sure everyone are divided by making sure people start speaking in different languages, instead of in one universal language which (according to the story) was the case before the tower was build.
The Babel templates wants to fix this division in knowledge, by bringing Wikipedians who speak different languages together. These boxes with Wikipedians language proficiencies, eventually evolved into userboxes with programming languages, nationalities, hobbies and much more.
Now the question is of course, does this range of different interests on Wikipedians Userpages actually bring people together? Does it make sure that people communicate about their interests with other Wikipedians? I interviewed a Wikipedian about this.
I interviewed Wikipedian User:Sundostund about his Userboxes
On the left is a graph of all the Userboxes on Sundostund's profile.
I would say that I noticed Userboxes from the moment I started editing Wikipedia back in 2010, but my interest in them grew more gradually over time.
For me, Userboxes are a way to express my true personality and beliefs, and to connect with people who might be on the "same page" as me (to the point of "online friendship" or "relationship"). I also "collect" those userboxes that I consider to be interesting or amusing, for reasons of humor or irony.
Unfortunately, I can't say that I ever met any friends, acquaintances, or romantic partners in a Wikipedia-related way, involving Userboxes or not. At least so far; I surely hope it will happen eventually... Also, I can't really recall some examples of Wikipedians who did.
I usually find new Userboxes by looking at various categories represented at Template:WikiProject Userboxes navbox. Also, I consider myself to be a true Userbox kleptomaniac, as I often randomly look at various Userpages, and simply copy-paste those Userboxes that I am interested in somehow.
When I decide to make a new Userbox, I usually do it both for others and for my own interests. Anyway, I almost always add a new Userbox at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Userboxes/New Userboxes, so that other users may easily see them.
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