Category Dictatorships

It has always been a pet peeve of mine when category creators view a category as something "owned" by them. These category dictators see group officers as people to share the work load, but nothing else. In their opinion, they thought up the initial idea and could care less what anyone else's opinion is. I don't see it that way. They are leaders, not owners, and by refusing to listen to officer's suggestions they limit the category.

Close-mindedness leads to categories that become stagnant. If there needs to be some tweaking of the category it helps to have open communication, as I talked about in my last post. Without this communication and tweaking to waymarkers become frustrated and don't continue to submit to the category. Unless I am extremely interested in a subject I won't submit more than one waymark to a category that is unclear as to what type of waymarks they're looking for, or to a category where the officers are rude when they make comments. There are plenty of other categories out there to take up my time. I kick it to my ignore list and move on.

Another issue I have come across as an officer is when leaders go through and re-evaluate waymarks that have already been approved. Nothing is more irritating as a waymarker than to have a waymark approved and then denied. If an officer is regularly approving things that the leader doesn't think fit, then the leader isn't doing their job very well. It indicates that either the category needs to have a few changes or the group needs to sit back and discuss reviewing practices and what is and isn't acceptable. Just re-evaluating an officer's approved waymarks and not politely discussing the problems is micro-managing. It treats the symptoms and not the main issue.

I'm not saying that the leader's vision for the category means nothing, I'm saying it doesn't mean everything. We all share the Waymarking Website and a single person cannot own one section of it. A category is created to share places with the world and a leader is only the category's guide, not its god.

This has been your latest installment of Janell's Pet Peeves. For more, just ask me about chain store categories. (kidding :) The photo above really has nothing to do with this post. The Victorian triplex is posted in the "NRHP - Contributing Buildings" category which is led by a person I've found to be a great collaborative leader, JimmyEv. So I guess that it has a tiny bit of context.