Hi all,
I'm involved in a debate about the pseudoscience and pseudoscientists categories, that seems to be at an impasse because of the differences between categories and lists.
One side argues that these two categories are inherently problematic, and that a list would be more appropriate because it allows for annotation of entires and referencing of sources.
The other side insists that a list is not acceptible and that a category is required, for reasons that don't seem particularly clear to me but which they feel strongly about.
Clearly this problem isn't restricted to just those two categories. There are several guidelines that deal with controversial categories, and this debate seems to come up whenever there is a vaguely defined or otherwise "sensitive" category. A more general solution seems to be in order.
Rather than continue the debate (which from the archives on the talk page for the pseudoscience category I can see has been continuing on and off for years) I thought it might be best to simply change how categories work, so that they can support the features of lists that are desired. (Yes, I'm using "simply" in an ironic manner :)
I've tried looking through the mailing list archives and on meta to see if this has been discussed before, but could not find anything relevant. Since there are many other problems with the category implementation (big DB hit for category page loads, inability to cache the results, etc.) I thought I should put together a comprehensive list of features, bugs, suggestions, and so forth before I begin development work.
I'd also like suggestions as to the best place to discuss this topic on either WP or meta.
-Bill Clark