Wikipedia talk:Guidelines for user categories

Acceptable types of Wikipedian categories[edit]

The proposed quideline states, Wikipedian categories should have practical value to the Wikipedia project by helping Wikipedians find other editors who may assist them with their work, and then list some types of categories that are appropriate for Wikipedians:

Categories for demographic information
Categories relating to an editor's areas of expertise
Categories relating to an editor's interests
Categories about an editor's personality, intelligence, or other personal characteristics
Categories about involvement in Wikipedia
Categories about an editor's Wikipedia philosophy

While categories for an editor's areas of expertise, interests and involvement in Wikipedia may well help Wikipedians find other editors who may assist them with their work, I don't see how categories for demographic information, about an editor's personality, intelligence, or other personal characteristics or about an editor's Wikipedia philosophy are useful for building Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 11:14, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the very least, I think that demographic information should be kept. To give examples of how it could be useful, a person's location is relevant for articles about that location or its surroundings, a person's ethnicity is relevant to articles about that ethnicity, gender is relevant if we wanted to check an article for gender bias, and so on. I still think that personal characteristics and Wikipedia philosophy are useful to the project, but I admit that I could do without them if necessary. --Cswrye 15:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]