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(a)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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