[WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

[Tony Sidaway]

On 1/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Tony, I agree these are a problem, but I'm not very familiar with
> them, so I have a question. What is the difference between having a
> box on your page saying you're e.g. Hindu, and having yourself listed
> in a Hindu Wikipedians category?

None.  It is the categorization that is the problem, facilitated to
some extent by the convenience of userboxes (the ease of typing {{user
bigendinan}} compared to "[[Category: Bigendian wikipedians]]).

Categorization people by skill or by services provided is a good use
of user boxes.  But the beliefs and religions userboxes provide a
handy telephone book for people interested in pushing a point of view
an unscrupulous enough to spam user talk pages or contact likely
supporters by email.

The categories must die too.