I speak English as my first language. I read and write Spanish better than I speak it.

I am a mathematician and I play French Horn and Trumpet. I also do West Coast Swing dancing as a hobby.

Userboxes are small stylized boxes with a graphic and some text which users use to describe themselves. Some users use userboxes exclusively to tell about themselves, while most use them to supplement the material about themselves on their userpages. Userboxes typically make statements about a user's skills, attributes, personality, interests, views, and affiliations.

Userboxes are of further use because many of them automatically place a user in a Wikipedia category (these categories serve as a directory of Wikipedians). The primary purpose of userboxes and user categories is to inform other Wikipedians to ways you might be able to aid them in editing. For instance, if you speak a language besides English, or have expertise in a particular field, other users will know they can contact you for assistance.

Here's a userbox directory to help you find userboxes for your user page:

See also:

• GUS directory

Complete instructions for how to design new userboxes and how to display userboxes on your userpage can be found at: Wikipedia:Userboxes. Here's a quick example on how to display userboxes, using the Babel template:

{{Babel|wikipedia/Administrator|en|es-2|de-1|piano-4|violin-4|viola-3|:The Raven's Apprentice/Userboxes/User Firefox|sfri|osx}}

After each " | " (pipe separator) is the name of a userbox. Just put in the ones that apply to you (from the userbox directory), as many as there are. This will place a column of userboxes down the right-hand side of your page.

As mentioned above, there is a directory of Wikipedians included in Wikipedia's category system. Many userboxes automatically enter you into one of these categories, but if you'd rather not display userboxes for this purpose, you could add the category tags manually to your user page. Category tags are placed at the end of the page, and look like this:

[[Category:Wikipedians]]
[[Category:Female Wikipedians]]
[[Category:Italian Wikipedias]]
[[Category:Wikipedian physicians]]

It is important to place yourself in the member directory so that other Wikipedians can find you based upon your skills and experience. They may need help on an article that you are particularly qualified to assist with.

Many users list the Wikipedia suborganizations they are members or regular participants of (such as our various departments and WikiProjects), the other Wikimedia projects they are involved in, even other wikis, and organizations IRL ("in real life").

You may be active in other project areas without being a listed member of an organisation, and may wish to list those. These might include the Welcoming Committee, Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, the Help desk, the Counter-Vandalism Unit, or the Articles for deletion discussions.

Administrators, arbitrators and those in similar elected positions or with privileged access to technical features will also usually identify themselves as such on their userpage.

You can simply list your memberships and affiliations, or use the graphics and userboxes provided throughout Wikipedia by the suborgs. Here are some examples:

A summary or list of the pages, projects, or programs you are currently working on.

• Real-world interests
• WikiInterests

• Real portrait
• Avatar
• Joke pic
  • For an example, see User:ClockworkSoul and take a look at his pic under "The real world me"

Provide a custom tour of Wikipedia via links. Some examples:

• Favorite articles
• Favorite bad jokes
• Favorite movies
• Favorite music
• Favorite books

A Wikiphilosophy is one's beliefs about what Wikipedia should be, how Wikipedia should be run, where's it's going, and how it will get there. All Wikipedians have a wikiphilosophy whether they are aware of it or not. Some users present their wikiviews on their user page for all to see, as diatribe, or as (of course) userboxes. Here are some known wikiphilosophies: