From my point of view the Genre option and resulting galleries are a viewer side application; someone wants to look at portraits, they go to the portrait gallery - the only reason for categorising a photo on the photographer's side is to create a framework to view the photo through (and it is therefore quite patronising to present a black and white photo with B&W as the framework to view it through if you think about it).  Now, i suppose you could argue that if someone wants to just view black and whites, they can go to the black and white genre gallery. Fair enough but, and maybe this is just me, if i wanted to look at just black and whites it would be for a very specific reason (to see how people deal with the style within a genre for instance) i wouldnt just want to browse black and white photos which could range across all genres, it would just be like turning your monitor to monochrome and viewing the galleries without a genre set... no point imo (based on the assumption that you chose a genre to browse through for viewing reasons).

Also the galleries which are seeing this influx of B&W photography are going to loose out in diversity of styles presented to the members viewing that gallery. Take for instance the attitude (and i'll confess to have held it in the past) that "black and white photography is boring and for old people who cant handle the vibrancy of colour" (or something along those lines).  Surely if people put the black and white photos in that "genre" someone browsing the portrait galleries with the above attitude will not come across black and white portraits as much and will not be able to expand as a photographer by appreciating black and whites through exposure to them.

Sure, not everyone will chose B&W over portraits, but say 50% do, you still get that water-down effect...

Taking this to the logical extreme (defining a genre by "style of photo") and so my point is made very clearly: picture the landscape gallery in all it's glory.  Now (completely) take out:

B&W
Tonemapped/HDR
Selective Desats
Panoramas
Square Crops
Long exposure
Aerial
... (i could go on with tighter and tighter styles here but i think you get the point)

And what do you have left...? a rather confined view on the world, completely devoid of any stylistic diversity. And probably around 50% of the headcount you had before sectioning off the shots to different areas...

So anyway - you might have realised that i dont think it is a good idea to group B&W's together...

Just one view tho, it is a community after all - anyone else got any thoughts?

"In every colour, there's the light.
In every stone sleeps a crystal.
Remember the Shaman, when he used to say:
Man is the dream of the Dolphin"

Rich Meadows Photography