Thread:Fossiliferous/@comment-32738051-20160905141710/@comment-24668482-20160905151605

I guess I opened this particular can of worms myself being the one who added categories to the Teams profiles. I did this purely to make a simple way of adding them to the site's top navigation bar other than having a big list of their names with roles in brackets. It needed to be something that could be adjusted in a click of a button, so using categories removes the need to edit navigation every time a change is made (it also gets around the fact that can't have a level 3 sub menus in navigation).

I wouldn't say it is particularly common place to see Categories used on user's profiles, since they are meant as a way of organising the information on the wiki itself.

That being said, I actually do understand what you are saying and see the merit in having a way of organising users in the same way (based on similarities/common interests) if they so wished. But I would argue that it would be better to have a completely different set of categories for users to use as tags on their profiles, that are completely separate to those used to organise the information on the wiki.

So I would say create a new category called "Windows players" that users can use on their profile if they want. And on that category page itself explain it is a community organisation category and link to the "Windows" category which links files/pages relevant to the windows version of the game (I know that the Windows category is underused, so is a poor example for this, but imagine the "gifting" category if suddenly 100 user profiles were added to it....).

I would advise caution about reading anything into the poweruer tag. It has nothing to do with this wiki, or any one wiki, and is basically a meaningless tag from a user's perspective. It is a tag used by wikia staff for collecting statistical data, and how it is used can be changed at any time by them without warning/announcement to help serve that back-end function. Basically it is a way for them to collect data on how people who use the website frequently use the website, to help their product development. It used to show next to people in the groups section of Special:ListUsers and I've just noticed it is gone for everyone but wikia bots (though people still have the tag, it just isn't showing there consistently any more), and it wasn't that long ago that it was displaying there, which is what I mean by it can change at any time as is just something used by wikia to collect statistics. Back when the tag was first used, a poweruser was someone who had made 140 edits in last 60 days, but wikia staff warned heavily that any and all criteria could change at any time. So it is possible that people will probably drift in and out of the poweruser group depending on what they happen to be collecting data on, which is why it is described as an 'internal status flag' rather than a right on Help:User Rights.

I would personally worry about people's feelings being hurt if they do not have a poweruser tag when feel they edit a lot or if it disappears randomly as criteria changes since it is not something we use or control. It would almost be better to ignore the internal poweruser status flag and come up with a SS wiki equivalent that is handed out to users (not as a right, but as a nice message on their wall and a category and picture on their profile if so wish) as they reach some milestone or another on the wiki (3 months since registered, for example). But that would involve creating a few groups and some graphics and having a few people who volunteer to do the tracking and leave the messages when milestones reached. And of course, such a plan would need to be discussed in forum first, so everyone can vote whether it was something they wanted or not before any work done on it. Just food for thought really.