User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1432718-20180626025359/@comment-188432-20180626161403

It's an interesting question, to be sure. And it'd be easy enough to delete. One keystroke would essentially wipe it out from the whole wiki.

But, in my opinion, you've drawn a false analogy between enemy categories and the infobox variable,. Categories have a technical function on a wiki that an infobox variable doesn't.

And in this case, the variable has no technical function at all. It's not wired up to be an SMW variable, so it can't generate reports, and therefore the results can't appear on pages anywhere. Anything put in the variable merely affects that page — and even then, only the infobox on that page. Text on the story page can give greater amplification as to what the line in the infobox means.

"Main" indeed is debatable, but it has proven pretty successful in keeping a lid on overuse of the variable. Tangerineduel's concern back then was that people were putting really minor characters, sometimes people who never crossed paths with the Doctor, into enemy categories. By contrast, looking at a few, familiar, old stories:
 * Cessair of Diplos is the stated of The Stones of Blood
 * The Daleks are the enemies of The Dalek Invasion of Earth
 * Mavic Chen and the Daleks are the enemies of ''The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)
 * Omega is the enemy of The Three Doctors
 * The Cybermen are the enemy of The Doctor Falls

And these are all cases where there are other plausible "villains" around. I think that "main", though admittedly imprecise, has actually been effective in keeping things under control — within the very different context of an infobox. For a category, it would be horribly imprecise. But for a thing that is merely meant to give a snapshot, it seems to be pulling editors' minds into focus.

Finally, I think it's a useful hedge against some categories, like. For instance, The Five Doctors is in Category:Dalek television stories. Now that categories are also at the top of the page, one of the first bits of information you see is that it's a "Dalek television story". But the infobox helps us immediately understand that they're not primary. So the reader can quickly deduce that it's a story that has Daleks in it, but it's not really "a Dalek story".

And I think that use case is even more important as you get away from TV stories, where it costs little to involve multiple species, briefly. I mean, just look at how many  Happy Endings is in. In that case, it's very useful to have the  declared as "The Master" — especially when, for example, Category:Ice Warrior novels is more confusing than revelatory.

So while I agree that it's imprecise — and while I might imagine one could point to some counter-examples of abuse — I think in typical use, it's doing more good than harm.