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A userbox is a small coloured box that allows users to add small messages on their user pages. It is an extension of the babel boxes used for users' language abilities. The Wikimedia Commons has a large range of icons for use within boxes.
The primary purpose of user boxes and user categories should be to alert other Wikipedians to ways you might aid them in editing. For instance, if you speak a second language or have professional expertise in a technical field, other users will know they can contact you for assistance. User boxes that are designed to provoke, offend, or reflect a POV rather than show expertise are generally discouraged. Jimbo Waleswrote on the matter:
Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.
Common uses for boxes include user interests, user skills, technical information, Misplaced Pages activities, or mere fun. There are four types of userbox templates. A gallery of example boxes is shown below.
Note: Many userboxes may be deleted or moved in the near future. This could result in many user pages with broken template references. If you are particularly attached to your userboxes, you may want to use subst.
If you choose to put an image in a userbox, make sure the image license is free. Misplaced Pages policy does not allow templates or user pages to have copyrighted works on them. See Misplaced Pages's fair use policy guidelines for more details.
All items in template and user space are governed by the civility policy.
Editors
Userboxes are not encyclopedic content; they are not to be used in articles.
Userboxes are intended to make statements about a user's skills, attributes, views and affiliations on user pages, but they are public resources residing in user space.
There are a number of box types to select from when deciding to make a userbox. The most commonly used design is the "Standard box". It has one square shaped area on the left ("id") and a rectangular area on the right ("info").
For ease of use, userboxes are made using maker-templates that have a number of parameters. Once the maker-template is saved, it is automatically transformed to HTML. See #A note on substitution above.
or{{subst:Userbox-2|side-box 1 color|main box color|side-box 1 content|message|side-box 2 content|border color|side-box 2 color|main box font-color|box border thickness}} Note: If omitted, border color and side-box 2 color default to the same color as side-box 1, and font color is black. Default border thickness is 1.
As with the Babel box, there is a box to group userboxes together. Just make a list of userboxes with {{Userboxtop|box-name}} at the top and {{Userboxbottom}} at the bottom. For example, the box to the right is created using the following list:
You may also change the alignment by using 'right' or 'left' as the 2nd parameter, or explicitly using parameter align. Thus, it is possible to create the same box on the right, but positioned on the left side of the page, by changing the the first line from {{Userboxtop|Example 1}} to {{Userboxtop|Example 1|left}}.
The actual Babel grouping system can also be used, e.g. {{Babel-4|sv|no-4|browser|rome}}. However, it only works for user boxes with the "User" prefix, which must then be dropped for the arguments. Also, boxes that need arguments of their own cannot be used with Babel, e.g. {{User wikipedia|administrator}}.)
