Hi WikiTreers,
Categories now appear at the bottom of a profile instead of above the biographies. See, for example, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Eisenhower-1
There is a little "[categories]" link where categories used to appear. Where categories appear at the bottom, there is an "[edit]" link that takes you to the text section of the profile editing page. There's also a "[top]" link that brings back to the top of the page.
We discussed this change a lot (most recently here and here) but I realize it will be jarring, and not everyone agrees with it.
An important point that emerged in our conversations is that categories aren't just for us. They're not just for genealogy collaboration. They are part of the genealogy content that we're growing and what makes it accessible to others, now and in the future.
For example, categorizing people as farmers may seem genealogically meaningless and overly broad for any practical purpose here. But some future descendant might want to see all their ancestors who were farmers, or some historian might want to see farmers in a certain geographical area.
Categorization is very useful for search and navigation, but the usage of categories has been constrained because members have only wanted to use them for genealogically important things -- things that merit appearing above the biography. Their overly-prominent position made their usage controversial. Now I think members will feel more comfortable seeing them used more liberally.
By the way, all this is about their appearance on the profile page. The placement of the category tags when editing a profile doesn't need to change.
We've made two other categorization-related changes:
1.) We simplified the introduction to categorization and moved around the more advanced instructions.
2.) We created a form for requesting a new category. Creating categories isn't something most members need to tackle on their own. This form is now linked from the bottom of every category page.
If you're an advanced categorizer you'll also be interested in the nice Categorization Project newsletter that Natalie and Steven posted a few days ago.
Onward and upward,
Chris