Forum:Category guidelines?

I noticed that there are no current category guidelines and that while the current category system does follow some conventions, there are also consistencies. I was wondering if it would be helpful to set up some category guidelines so that the system is set up and will function more uniformly. Specifically:

Capitalization Most categories have all the words capitalized (Manga Story Arcs), while some do not (Featured article). While I have seen both in place, my take on this is that capitalizing all parts of a category name is not necessary and that only the proper parts of the name need to be capitalized, similar to the.

Plural names There is inconsistency with plural names, particularly with single named categories (Manga Chapter) having multiple subjects. It would be simpler if all categories that will contain multiple subjects are all in plural form (e.g. there are 3 movies, so even though only Big Trouble in Nekonron, China has an article, the category should be named Movies).

Over-categorization This happens when a subject appears in both a parent and a subcategory. E.g. Tatewaki Kuno is characterized in Main Rivals, Rivals, and Characters. The current categorization of these is:


 * Rivals
 * Main Rivals


 * Characters
 * Main Rivals

Because Main Rivals is already included within Rivals as well as Characters, Kuno is already characterized under both, making the additions of Rivals and Characters redundant. If these were removed it would not take him out of those categories, he would just not be displayed under them. This is standard for the MediaWiki category system. The question is whether or not to favor over-categorizing, or to categorize as specifically as possible to cut out redundancy. The latter eliminates crowding by diffusing or drilling down and fully utilizes the category system, but does assume that readers will be able to figure out that the system is being used in a more sophisticated manner. Projects like Wikimedia Commons promote this, but it is up to the individual wiki on how to handle it. I personally favor using the categories like this.

Under categorization On the other hand, there are categories currently in the larger Browse category that could be better organized more specifically. E.g. Music currently seems to be functioning as a catch-all category to include anything music-related as well as the article's more specific category - CoCo is currently under both Music and Performers. I am suggesting that related categories which would be logical subcategories be placed under the larger ones in order to concentrated all the related subjects together. These would be organized in order of general to specific. Music thus could be organized as follows:


 * Music
 * Albums
 * Songs - Any song not falling into one of the 3 specific subcategories below would go here.
 * Instrumentals
 * Ending themes
 * Opening themes
 * Performers

Big topics like Anime and Manga as well as Images (which I have some ideas for that I will flesh out in a separate topic) could be organized in a similar way.

-- BrokenSphere (Talk) 06:57, December 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * So in short: only capitalise proper parts of the category name; all topics covering multiple articles should be plural and removal/addition of (effectively) subcategories depending on the category subject (sorry if I've missed anything).


 * Right, I pretty much agree with everything you said. I'll just to point out that originally there wasn't a Main/Minor Rival category, it was just added to a couple of pages by another user and ended up being reused throughout the Wiki, but that's beside the point. Anyway, about the only problem with this I can see is that it would take a while to be put into force across the Wiki in terms of changing the articles which have the categories in the current format, especially when there are no working bots. --Trivi-AM (talk) 14:39, December 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * It would be a lot of work to implement across 600 articles. However as all of the articles are already categorized somehow, this helps out.  By comparison there are 1,800+ images, only 13 of which are in some sort of category, and I also feel that it would be helpful to get these organized.  However I will save my ideas on that for another topic because the organization that I have in mind would follow the category conventions agreed upon to be implemented here.   BrokenSphere  (Talk) 15:50, December 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * BTW, I noticed that you added Locations to Furinkan High School, which is covered by the Furinkan High School category - this is an example of over-categorizing. Did you mean to go as specific as possible with the categories vs. staying broad, as I discussed above?   BrokenSphere  (Talk) 20:31, December 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * I returned the Locations category since I hadn't noticed it was covered by the Furinkan High category. I also returned it as the "Read more" section was altered with other locations removed, so I returned it in an attempt to try return the other locations (sorry this is just how I've gotten used to working from categories [location tag since removed]). --Trivi-AM (talk) 22:22, December 20, 2011 (UTC)