On 5/10/06, jf_wikipedia@mac.com jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
I would like to hear your opinion on these categories and their compliance with [[Wikipedia:Categorization of people]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people)
My concern is that people are using Category:Criminals // Category:American Criminals as a way to push negative POVs aginst such persons (regardless if the person is alive or dead). The reason for my concern is that it indiscriminately group people as diverse as person that was convicted from stealing a pair of jeans at Wal- Mart with serial killers, rapists and the like.
See for example the bio of [[Ron_Karenga]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Ron_Karenga). In his biography it is described that "in 1965, and in 1971 was convicted of felony assault of two of the group's female members, for which he spent time in prison", so he was added to the Category:Criminals. That IMO, is not acceptable.
One possibility would be to restrict the addition to people to the main category "Criminals" and request that people are added to a specific sub-category of[[:Category:Criminals]]. And if such sub- category does not exists, either to create a new subcat, or simply not adding a category.
I am interested to hear what other editors think on this matter, and what can be done to curtail abuse of this category.
There has already been a discussion on this topic on the list. These Categories are problematic at best; perhaps they should be changed to "Americans convicted of a crime" or something similar.
Jay.