[WikiEN-l] User categories and lists

[Guettarda]

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)