User:Superlightoftruth/WikiProject:User categorisation

Notice: This is only here to fix red links, It has not been simpled yet

This is a new Wikiproject dedicated to revamping the system by which users may categorize themselves. In the past (and partially for now until the new system is entirely in place) user categorization has been accomplished through hundreds of unsorted lists that are growing very large in some cases and are almost entirely unmanageable. The English Wikipedia is one of the few still using this defunct system. It has been proposed (and is currently being implemented) that these lists be replaced by a system of organised categories. Thus was spawned the WikiProject for User Categorisation.

The old system

Note: this information is outdated

Visit Wikipedia:Wikipedians to see the old system of categorisation. There is an extremely large and unwieldy Wikipedia:Alphabetical list of Wikipedians list, and many subpages for listing by region (for example, Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Argentina). These pages are entirely unsorted, voluntary listings that do not automatically reflect on user pages. They do offer annotation, which in the new system will be reserved for individual user pages (as it should be). The issue of being able to sub-categorise within countries and states has been raised, but there is no problem! Simply create sub-categories within the state you wish to break up (for example, in Canada, or large states like California there is good cause to create many sub-categories).

The new system

The 'master' category is Category:Wikipedians, with the bulk of the changes being made through its sub-category Category:Wikipedians by location which will eventually replace all of the regional listings through Wikipedia:Wikipedians. This will allow for the replacement of many unwieldy, unsorted voluntary-listing pages and also allow that categories a user is added to will reflect on their user page, which would not happen under the old system of lists.

Participants

Please list yourself here if you are going to help work on this project. Some users have had their names added by others because of large contributions.

How to help

See To-do below for detailed list of pages that need attention.

Thanks to all who lend a hand! To follow progress, please visit Wikipedia:Wikipedians and its subpages, where more instructions are temporarily provided according to the specific page.

The instructions on this page are also always open to clarification by anybody willing to help!

Creating new categories

If there are subsections within these pages, they should be reflected by sub-categories to the category that will be replacing the parent pages.

See below on how to populate the new category.

Every user category page should use one of the Usercat templates to insert a standard message to the category description.

Most pages will want to use Template:Usercat:

{{Usercat|Albania|.}}

This inserts a standard message like this:

This page is replacing Wikipedians/Albania. See User categorisation for more information.

Classification: Wikipedians | By location | Albania

Wikipedians who live in or are associated with Albania.

To add yourself to this list, insert the following on your user page:

[[Category:Wikipedians in Albania|{{subst:PAGENAME}}]]

The third argument, in this case a period, is added to the end of the description, so you can add regional noticeboard links, etc.

For subcategories, use one of the Usercat-x templates, where x is a number. An example:

{{Usercat-1|Alberta|Canada|Canadian Wikipedians|Canada|.}}

The arguments are: Country name, the Wikipedia:Wikipedians subpage the category is replacing, the parent category link, the parent category visible link part (i.e. the parent country name) and the description, as in Usercat.

The Usercat-x templates with x bigger than 1 use a similar style for arguments, with the first, second and last being the same, and the arguments in the middle being parents in different levels (i.e. China | People's Republic of China | Mainland China).

Populating existing categories

Make sure that the new category page is using one of the Usercat template as described above in Creating new categories.
Visit the page that is being replaced (some of the new categories listed below do not have a page they are replacing, but the category page itself still needs formatting). The link to the left is generally the one being replaced.
1. If there are subsections to that page they warrant the creation of new subcategories (for example, on Wikipedia:Wikipedians/New York, there is an explicit New York City section that warrants a sub-category to Category:Wikipedians in New York). If those subcats are not listed, they should be added to the list below until somebody adds them to help the community work out issues.
2. Visit the user pages listed and leave them a message on their talk page with this contents: {{subst:Usercat_msg|country|category}}, where country is the country page the user was listed on and category is the new category that is replacing the list. This way, users can choose themselves whether they want to add their names to the category system or not, instead of rudely editing their user pages. Remember, you still have to sign the edit.
3. After the above two steps have been done, the page should be entirely erased except for a notice stating that the page has been replaced by the category (redirects to categories don't work correctly because of a bug in the MediaWiki software). Use an edit summary like Removed and redirected as part of [[Wikipedia:User categorisation]]., so if someone is watching the page, they won't get a knee-jerk reaction to revert. Use this notice:

 This page has been replaced by [[:Category:Wikipedians in Acadia]].

Once those steps are completed, the list below should be modified to reflect the completion by ~~striking~~ (<s>striking</s>) the replaced link and making the finished category bold ('''bold''').