On 29/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It's A Tricky One. The trouble is when the fine line between "useful for encyclopedic collaboration" and "social networking at best, POV-pushing list at worst" is way too blurry.
I'm mindful of the de:wp answer, which was to allow *only* languages and location in userboxes.
At this stage I'd say there isn't the community will to do something about these things. I think the worst of them tend to die so perhaps by natural selection we'll end up with relatively benign user categories.
My solution would simply be to ask the developers to disable categories in userspace and talkspace. Where aggregation of users is either required for operational purposes (blocked socks and the like) or for skill sharing (languages, education, vocational skills), list pages in project space would do the same job in a much more reliable and trackable way (category membership has no history). But we won't get my solution so that's just a pipe dream.