[WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding global guidelines?

Sat Jun 25 18:49:15 UTC 2005

Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I'm quite severely disturbed by the apparent habit of participants in 
>> some WikiProjects to completely disregard Wikipedia's Manual of Style 
>> and various guidelines, claiming that their pet WikiProject has their 
>> own pet style guidelines, as if Wikipedia's global guidelines have no 
>> say anyway.
>
>
> I've recently come across a couple of examples of something like this 
> this too, on Wikiproject Cricket. 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cricket_subcategories> directly 
> contains all subcategories of Category:Cricket in it, for use by 
> wikiproject members who want a list of categories to search when 
> categorizing new aticles. My attempts to either replace this with a 
> plain old list page or to move the category tags into talk pages (in 
> accordance with the category guidelines suggesting that "meta" 
> categories should go on talk pages) were vigorously opposed by 
> Wikiproject members. I let the issue lie for a few months since it 
> didn't seem in any way urgent and monitoring the category's usage over 
> that time has been useful.

As a followup "where are things now" sort of thing, here's what 
happened. After I mentioned category:cricket subcategories here, it was 
put up for deletion by User:Thebainer. I had been hoping to wait for six 
months or so before putting it up for deletion again, the last time was 
only four months earlier. It failed the vote again, with Grutness voting 
keep because "they seem to be keener on using the category, so I'm 
swayed towards supporting a keep here." and Ngb voting keep because 
"This is, as previously discussed in a recent CfD for the same category, 
an invaluable tool for participants in the Cricket Wikiproject 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cricket>. Conversion 
to a list is unsuitable as the list would need to be manually updated 
every time a new category was developed."

I still maintain that this category is in violation of Wikipedia 
guidelines, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization#Wikipedia_namespace 
states "Categories relating to the Wikipedia namespace 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Project_namespace> should be 
added only to the talk page 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page> of articles. For 
example, tags suggesting the article is needs work 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:To_do>, or is listed on VfD 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VFD> would be placed on the talk page 
as they are relevant to editors, not an aid to browsing in the way 
ordinary categories are." So in accordance with that, I went ahead and 
started moving the category tags over to the category_tak: pages.

I got as far as the "C"s before User:Calsicol 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Calsicol>came along and reverted all 
the work I'd done. He said "You seem to be an American, and your page 
gives no indication that you have any interest in cricket. Thank you." 
While it is true that I have no particular interest in cricket, this 
strikes me as being exactly the sort of problem that this thread was 
talking about; it doesn't _matter_ that I have no particular interest in 
cricket (and although I'm not actually American, it wouldn't matter if I 
was either). I have an interest in making sure the category system on 
Wikipedia is being used in a nice and tidy manner, which gives me just 
as much reason to be changing this setup as someone who's a rabid 
cricket fan.

Anyway, I guess I'll let the issue drop again for another couple of 
months and come back to it. I still have the 2005 cricket season 
subcategory thing to work on, I expect that'll draw a lot of ire when I 
start actually changing things too.