Carbonite wrote:
What's your opinion on the inclusion of user categories (Pro-life, Democrat, etc...) in userboxes? Even if these userboxes are kept, I don't see why these templates should categorize users unless it somehow relates to the encyclopedia (we should keep Babel boxes, for example). I realize you'd like to remain neutral on the general issue of userboxes, but would you support the removal of categories from most userboxes?
I'm not going to be heavy handed about this, but I would recommend that as a general social rule, we try to refrain from self-identifying as advocates within the context of Wikipedia. Given that we're trying to work together collaboratively on a _neutral_ encyclopedia project, it seems to me to be not relevant and perhaps leaning towards the unhealthy to do so.
Let me give an example. I have a vague general understanding that my politics and David Gerard's politics are quite different. But, we basically never talk about this, and there's never any real reason to talk about this, because the ultimate point is that we're both firmly committed to kindness and neutrality and getting it right, and so our own personal opinions on various matters outside Wikipedia are pretty much no obstacle at all to our working together extremely well within Wikipedia.
Most people outside Wikipedia assume that it must be, internally, some kind of grand struggle between what we might roughly call "the party of the left" and "the party of the right". In general, though, of course it is not. (Sometimes, on some pages, it sadly ends up being that way for short periods of time.)