On 1/4/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
The irony is that with so many boxes, some people are going to discover that they're the only Wikipedian to hold a certain belief, which is likely to be more humiliating than anything else. I expect the fad will crest at about that point - who wants to advertise that they're unpopular?
Well this may apply to unpopular beliefs, but there's still the question of the <insert any popular belief here>.
The three cases I've found happen to involve Roman Catholic anti-abortionists, but I have no read to believe that this is the only large and popular grouping in which these userboxes happen to be abused. I just happen to have noticed these cases. I have no reason to believe that this kind of abuse will lessen with time--indeed if it's not strongly opposed it's very likely to grow to become a customary form of abuse. We don't need this.
I can also see belief-haters adding themselves directly to a category, quietly bypassing userbox, as a way to monitor the category members.
Sure, there are defensive strategies. But the defensive strategies are all aimed at making the userboxes (insofar as they're purported to have some kind of use) unusable. Why risk having them in the first place if they'll only lead to an arms race?