User:Jc37/Sandbox/Wikipedian categories

The following is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.

Categories:

A category is a location which has Category: as its namespace antecedant. It's both a page; and a grouping of pages through technical means.

This can be somewhat confusing for some, because a category can be populated by the adding of a single line to a template (Or any page which may be transcluded), thus every page to which that template is transcluded will suddenly be added to the category.

So adding a category to any page (including templates) is also considered an edit to Category: space.

This isn't in doubt, because several Wikipedians have been warned (and some eventually blocked) concerning misuse of Category-space by making "redlinked categories" disruptively (among other things).

After many discussions (at Cfd, Ucfd, WP:AN, WP:AN/I, the Village pump, misc talk pages, and elsewhere), it seems fairly clear that:

1. categories may be populated of many members by a single editorial action of a single editor.
2. reversion of that action often requres a full CFD nomination, rather than simply re-editing, contrary to what WP:BRD suggests.

After witnessing the "many discussions" noted above:

1. Wikipedian categories may be about a person's personal preferences, and as is often human nature, a person gets "attached" to their preferences, and by extension, they often get "attached" to anything that has to do with those preferences. That's nothing new on Wikipedia. (WP:AADD.) If it was in article space, we might be discussing WP:OWN issues (or in some cases, vandalism, or WP:POINT issues). But it's in category space, grouping pages of users, which may be being done (as noted above) by a mere edit to a transcluded template.
2. Honestly, one of the main opinions whenever these discussions come up in a broader forum is "who cares" and "get back to directly contributing to the encyclopedia". Though it's interesting that, once those disinterested become interested, and start doing the reading, and so on, they tend to see the issues. So, in my experience, it's a matter of the uninformed saying "who cares", and the informed saying "you should", and the "IWANTMINE" crowd saying "we do".

UCFD

1. At UCFD, AFAIK, the guidelines for CFD are followed (with the fairly common exception to the closure guidelines, since so many admins seem hesitant to close, due to how much "drama" may ensue from the "vocal minority", among many other reasons).
2. Any XfD discussion presumes that any interested editor will comment in the discussion based on placing a "tag" (a huge template notification) at the top of the page nomintaed for such discussion. I don't think anyone suggests that we must notify all page editors of a page when it's up for discussion. (though I have seen that done in some cases, for good or ill).
3. The presumption at an XfD page is simply that if someone wanted to comment (presuming that they aren't on WikiBreak, or are in some other way prevented) then they will. It is their choice, as editors, to contribute or to not contribute however they see fit.

Based on many discussions at CFd and UCFD (and elsewhere):

1. Categories shouldn't be used anywhere as "bottom-of-the-page" notices. If someone wishes to add such information, add it to the article (or the userpage) in some manner. A "category grouping" should not be created for such things.
2. Wikipedian categories should be directly useful to collaborating on the encyclopedia. Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_blog.2C_webspace_provider.2C_social_networking.2C_or_memorial_site, and probably more clearly Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information. Creating categories for all the infinite amounts of personal data on Wikipedians is simply not considered a "good thing". A "userpage notice" should be enough. So as is often said at UCFD: The userbox is probably fine, but the category is not. Imagine the category bloat if all such categories were deemed "acceptable". We'd have more categories for Wikipedians than for articles. And while I strongly support supplemental support of the Wikipedian community as an indirect way to indirectly contribute to the encyclopedia, creating a mass of indiscriminate categories is not the way to do so.

So does this all have previous consensus? Yes, I believe it does. The archives of CfD, UCFD, and DRV list repeated examples. And WP:UCFD/I shows how consistant the results tend to be.

The above is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.