[WikiEN-l] User categories and lists

Wed Sep 21 05:34:13 UTC 2005

I too am worried about the "Wikipedians" lists being eradicated in
favor of categories.

The "List of" pages served a rare social function within the community
which is missing with the sterile category method of aggregating the
names.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 9/21/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> The List of Caribbean Wikipedians was redirected to the Category:Caribbean
> Wikipedians tonight. Thus I learned about Wikipedia:User categorisation.
> While I realised that these cats (Wikipedians in Foo) were spreading, I was
> shocked to realise that this page was telling people to redirect lists to
> categories. Maybe I missed the discussion at the Village Pump, but I could
> not figure out what the point of this change was.
> 
> The List of Caribbean Wikipedians is a working resource associated with the
> Caribbean Wikipedians' notice board. It serves a purpose in the improvement
> of Caribbean-related articles. So why must it be removed? In addition,
> although there are 17 names on the list, there are only 4 names in the
> Category, and over a dozen national sub-categories...sub-categories which
> are so badly named that I cannot add myself to one of them (I am not in
> Trinidad and Tobago). The best case scenario would leave the names scattered
> through over a dozen categories, with no clue as to whether they had any
> interest in matters arising from the notice board or not.
> 
> Am I the only one who is bothered by projects which set out to remove useful
> material? True, some of the lists are too long to be useful, and true, it's
> "fun" to be able to add a link to your user page saying that you in Foo (not
> from, not associated with...in). But what sort of a project focusses on the
> appearance of the Wikipedia namespace instead of focussing on usefulness? Or
> is it no longer true that we are here to write an encyclopaedia?
> 
> Ian (Guettarda)
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