[WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding global guidelines?

Sat Jun 25 20:15:41 UTC 2005

I for one (despite being a cricket cabalist) agree with you on the category 
thing. I don't quite understand the reasoning for the cricket subcategories 
category. I actually intend to undertake a major review of cricket 
categories very soon, so I'll discuss the point then.

However, I do in general disagree that policy (or at least guideline) 
couldn't be bypassed when it is for the best for the encyclopdia as a whole. 
That should be our target, not slaveishly following guidelines for their own 
sake.

Sam

On 6/25/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> 
> 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.
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