Forum:Hiding maintenance categories

What do you think about turning maintenance categories (i.e. all subcates of Category:Articles requiring attention) into hidden categories? The effect would be that these categories would not be displayed in the articles where they are used, essentially hiding them from the 90% of readers who don't care about them and stopping them from clogging up the category bar.

Previewing a page lists hidden categories at the bottom of the page, below the list of templates used, and the people who want them to be displayed can turn on "Show hidden categories" on the "Misc" tab of their preferences. Hidden categories can of course still be viewed, and they show up in category listings (i.e. in their parent category) like normal categories.

The reasons why I'm suggesting this are that (as I said) the vast majority of readers don't care about them and the maintenance cats clutter up the category bars, especially because they're usually displayed before the "real" categories (mostly due to the management boxes which insert them being at the top of an article).

Opinions? -- Porter21 (talk) 14:34, February 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer to keep them displayed, if only so that some people might consider them an incentive to start editing. But if others are in favor of hiding it, I won't mind it that much either. Ausir(talk) 02:43, February 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a valid point in theorý, but to be honest, I don't think the categories are an incentive. If anything (rare as it is to have some actually act upon maintenance-tagged articles), the mboxes are the main incentive, not something in the last row of the article. It's not like hiding the categories will make the mboxes themselves disappear, so the prime incentive is still there. -- Porter21 (talk) 10:50, February 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that it's the boxes at the top of the page (mboxes did you call them?) are the incentive for editors. It's fine with me to reduce clutter at the bottom where categories are listed.--Gothemasticator 10:53, February 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah sorry, I sometimes have a tendency to fall into "template speech" :P I usually call all the "article management boxes" or "message boxes" simply mboxes because that's the name of the template they're all based on (mbox). Similarly, you'll see Ausir or me occasionally refer to "canonboxes" or "sourceboxes" (all templates based on sourcebox, which was previously called "canonbox"). -- Porter21 (talk) 11:03, February 5, 2010 (UTC)