[WikiEN-l] Category:Criminals // Category:American Criminals

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 5/10/06, jf_wikipedia at mac.com <jf_wikipedia at 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.
>
It's a high level category, so it doesn't group the different types of
criminals directly together (and in that sense isn't much different
from Mother Theresa and Hitler both being grouped under the category
"People").

As for it being a negative POV, I was going to comment about some
seeing the category as more of a badge of honor, but then I realised
Thoreau *wasn't* in the category, even indirectly.

> 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.
>
Hmm, did you go ahead and implement that?  Because it seems to be the
case right now.

Anthony