UESPWiki:Archive/CP Userbox categoriess

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

I begin this topic with a sense of trepidation, since I know it's been the subject of many heated discussions in the past: should we use categories to list people with similar interests. Earlier today I saw a new template created: {{User Christian}}, and that it created a new category for Christians. My first reaction was to sigh a big sigh and head for the edit button so I could propose it for deletion; NOT because I'm anti-Christian, but because I thought we'd gone through this and decided that this kind of template wasn't wanted. Before I did, I did a quick check and found we still have {{User Atheist}} (for one) and so having better things to do elsewhere, I decided to ignore it and come back later. When I did, I saw that the category had been proposed for deletion by RobinHood70. The Atheist one remains un-prodded.

Now I'm not criticising RH70 here, because until I checked I thought they were all gone, so my first instinct would have been to propose only the new one for deletion, but it brings this debate back to the fore. Somewhere - and I'm too tired to find it right now - there's a list that Timenn made, and with which I agreed, that contained Userbox categories worth keeping. It seems we got as far as making the list and agreeing that the others should go.... but then not killing them. If someone can find it, that'd be great. In any case, we still have the question: do we want these categories or not? rpeh •T•C•E• 00:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Oops, I just deleted the category for Atheist before discovering this, and now I see I have a message too. :) I had meant to follow up on this a long time ago but got side-tracked. The most recent discussion I remember (which links to others) seemed to generally concur that the categories should go, and my opinion certainly hasn't changed since then. To be consistent, and address BFG's concern, I'll prod the Atheist page as well, though we may want to unprod both until this discussion is resolved. – Robin Hood↝talk 00:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Aha, I found the list here. I still don't see why those categories shouldn't be deleted. If last night's little to-and-fro on the Christian and Atheist templates proved anything, it's that these things can be far more trouble than they're worth. rpeh •T•C•E• 10:51, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with all of those being removed and the categories prodded or speedied. We should probably also run RoBoT or HnB to check for any other calls to the user category template, and/or check a list of all category pages starting with "User", so we can deal with any that've been added in the last year. I'm on my way to bed, so won't be running HnB now, but if you haven't done it by tomorrow, I'll set HnB on it. – Robin Hood↝talk 12:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I've only got an ancient version of RoBoT with me, 'cos I've only got VS2005 on this machine instead of 2008 on my desktop. I'll leave it to HnB. rpeh •T•C•E• 14:51, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've created a list just based on calls to {{Userbox Category}}. I did a search of category names that contained User or Users and didn't see any off-hand that weren't already included that should be, but it was a large list, so I think it might be easiest to prune out the bulk of them, then see if any others were missed. The list is in my sandbox. It might make more sense to copy that to a different page for a permanent record, though. Any discussion of specifics should take place here, then move things around once a consensus is reached. In that vein, there were a few I was ambivalent about:

• Nintendo Users

Are there any ES games on the Nintendo? If not, this could be removed.

• Undecided Gender Users

While I think this is mostly used to be cute, there are genuinely some people who don't identify with a specific gender, so I'm slightly in favour of leaving this in unless we decide to scrap gender categories altogether. I won't complain if it's taken out, though...if we get a non-specific gendered person or a trans-gendered person, they can always assert their rights at that time.

• Users from Known Countries

Is this really necessary in addition to categorizing people in places like "Users from Canada"?

• Loremasters
• Writers

I'm not sure to what extent the bottom two are useful in a site-related context. I can see arguments either way, so I've left them both in "Keep" for now. Also, I've left the various knowledges and the genders as "Keep", but again, I can see arguments for and against, so I'm not really pressing for keeping them so much as trying not to get delete-happy. – Robin Hood↝talk 05:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The "Users from Known Countries" should probably become just the parent for the other country categories rather than being used on user's pages. The Loremasters and Writers categories are useful in the same sense as the "Knowledges" ones - if people didn't just put every damn userbox on their pages, it'd be handy to see who knows what. Loremasters would be useful to find people to ask about lore-related issues, and Writers would help other fanfic writers to find people willing to help or proofread.

The other two can probably go. rpeh •T•C•E• 10:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

\=>For the Users from Location it could be argued that is helpful to determine at what times a user will be active, also to give an indication where the most users come from.

As for the knowledgeable categories, they start to get old. I suggest removing the minor ones (for expansions), and just keep those that concern entire games. I think these categories start to get really useful again when Skyrim is out. Expand the categories for a while so users can let know they're busy with a certain guild, and can help patrol articles that concern that guild.

I agree that the Nintendo users can go as well. It's different from the Mac and Linux users, as those users actually got their game working on their platform.

Leaves the Undecided Gender users. I understand your point RH, but you're not obliged to use a Male or Female userbox. Isn't the freedom to omit that userbox enough? --Timenn-<talk> 09:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

"Isn't the freedom to omit that userbox enough?"

Not really. I just didn't bother to put {{User Male}} up until fairly recently, if then.

As far as {{User Christian}} and {{User Atheist}}, is there a reason we can't simply create user religion and have different text options for all religions?

Also, Timmen, what do you mean about expanding the knowledgeable categories? I'm not sure if I'm being slow or what, but it's confusing to me.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 10:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

The question isn't about the userboxes themselves, but the categories associated with them. Combining userboxes is not a good idea in this case, as it will lead to all sorts of problems; atheism isn't a religion, for example. It would create more pain of endless discussion than the combining of userboxes would help.

What I mean by expanding is that it can help us with the release of Skyrim. The game will be big enough that no editor is going to complete all of it in a few days. We might need to know the scope of each regular editor. For example; I figure I'll be dealing with the Main Quest mostly, so I can focus on articles related to that. You, on the other hand, want to finish the Main Quest after having done anything else, so you will not want to get spoiled by reading related articles. We can use the categories to keep track whether we have enough editors who can deal with Main Quest articles.

In other words, it's an idea to prepare for the release of a new game and the danger of spoilers for editors. Nothing we need to decide now, but since the matter was brought up I mentioned it right away. --Timenn-<talk> 10:40, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea actually, although we'll need to be very, very strict about the use of the boxes.

I agree that the "knowledgeable about x plugin" categories can go. Most people will either have bought them, or will be playing a version of the game that comes with them all right from the start. rpeh •T•C•E• 11:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as gender goes, do we need categories for gender at all? I mean, how often do you think "I'd really like to talk to a man/woman about this, let's see who's who"? I think the userbox for each user ought to be sufficient. In terms of the unspecified gender, as I said, I think if we get any alternative-gendered users, we can probably worry about it at that time; I'm not aware of any such active users, so it's really not a big concern either way at the moment.

Also, as an aside to GgD/TAO: it would be relatively simple to create a global User Religion template, and probably another one for User Nationality, but doing all-in-one templates discourages users from creating their own, as it makes the templates much more daunting for people inexperienced with template editing. That's why it made sense to do it that way for things like User Birthsign, where there should rarely (if ever) be a need to add new birthsigns, but for things like Nationality, where we may get someone come along from Tuvalu tomorrow who wants to create User Tuvaluan, it makes sense to keep them as single-purpose userboxes. Of course, that does have the significant disadvantage that if you want to change something for all of them, you have to do it one-by-one or using a bot. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I see the gender boxes as useful because they allow you to use proper pronouns when replying to someone, or asking them a specific question.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 01:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The boxes themselves are very useful. I just mean the categories. – Robin Hood↝talk 02:25, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Good point. The categories can probably go then.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 02:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

(←) Just to reiterate what I've said before, I fully agree with deleting any categories that don't complement working on the wiki. I have no issue with the userboxes themselves, but there's no reason to maintain categories that have no real purpose. --GK^talk2me 03:25, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, since there doesn't seem to be any opposition to the removal of these categories, I'll try to get started on the removal tomorrow. So if there are any objections to the keeps & deletes in my sandbox, speak now, or forever hold your peace! – Robin Hood↝talk 23:43, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to make triply sure: The only things up for deletion are the categories, right?--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 00:48, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Yup. No userboxes will be harmed in the making of this mov...errr...you know what I mean. – Robin Hood↝talk 04:48, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

(←) Okay, the template portion of the work is done (unless I missed any). I still have to propose the categories for deletion, but I'm going to give it an hour or so while our job queue catches up so I can tell if there are any manually-added categories that need to be removed as well. I'll post another update when I'm done. – Robin Hood↝talk 02:34, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

And the rest of it is now done. If I missed anything, or screwed anything up, please let me know either here or on my talk page. – Robin Hood↝talk 06:54, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Final (I hope) wrap-up: Now that Krusty has gone through and deleted the bulk of the user categories, I've gone through the remaining categories with "user" in their name and proposed four for deletion that we missed the first time around. I think that should be the end of it unless we decide that certain others are unnecessary (e.g., the Tamriel Rebuilt or Modding categories, but I suspect those are useful). – Robin Hood↝talk 21:23, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that those are useful. If I'm having trouble getting a mod to work right, and I can't figure out why from the pages on here look up the category. Tamriel Rebuilt is also rare enough knowledge that you can't assume that everyone knows about them.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 00:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)