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)