Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories

WikiProject Categories has been set up to help manage the categories of Wikipedia and improve them. The goal is to categorize all articles in a way that is consistent with the guidelines at Wikipedia:Categorization.

Discussions about categorization policy happen at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. That page is also the place for solving specific issues related to category organization.

To delete, merge, or rename categories, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion.

Please direct all talk to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories if you would like to help or comment on the project.

There is a task force that puts uncategorized articles into categories.

Current projects

Please list any categorization projects you are planning or are in the process of working on. Include your name and date and describe what you are/will be doing. See also: Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention

• User:Rustavo: I have been sorting Category:Pathology and its subcategories - the biggest changes are the new categories Category:Gross pathology, and Category:Histopathology, into which I'm sorting appropriate disease-associated entities (though not diseases themselves, since they have an existing category, Category:Diseases). A new stub category - Category:Pathology stubs - is on the way too. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 06:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• User:Circeus: I am currently sorting category:Birds down into orders and families whenever possible. Will move on to plants when done. Have done:
  • category:Anseriformes
  • category:Caprimulgiformes
  • category:Charadriiformes
  • category:Ciconiiformes
  • Category:Columbiformes
  • Category:Coraciiformes
  • Category:Cuculiformes
  • Category:Galliformes
  • Category:Gaviiformes
  • Category:Gruiformes
  • Category:Podicipediformes
  • Category:Trochiliformes
  • Category:Apodiformes
  • Category:Syriacs
  • Currently doing N/A
• User:Carcharoth: I have largely finished sorting Category:Disasters while trying to avoid getting confused by Category:Natural hazards. It has been a useful exercise to see how these categories work in practice. I would appreciate any feedback either at the talk page for this project or my talk page. Carcharoth 19:00, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
• User:Tompw: I have compiled a list of catergories that contain themselevs in some way. I feel this is not good practice, especially when a catergory contains itself explicitly (e.g. Arctic animals). See my user page for the list (or copy it elsewhere if you think that'd be more useful). Tompw 22:40, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
• User:Nagle: I've just finished synchronizing List of punk bands with Category: punk groups, by tagging all listed articles with the category. I plan to make the existing list a redirect to the category. This was an experiment to see how well it would work. The list turned out to be about 60% in sync with the categories. --John Nagle 18:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• User:Museumfreak:I'm trying to find articles that should go in Category:Public Health and move them there, and in many cases plan to write or expand them as lots of them are stubs, as well as try to think up a meaningful subcategory system. Please help! Museumfreak 01:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
• User:epolk:I am currently sorting through Category:Government of the United States and recating items that have been miscategorized. I am also doing alpha sorting on the many items that end up under U for United States. Epolk 22:41, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

• User:Sam, After discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, I am creating categories for language related occupations such as writers, singers, film directors, etc... See the subcategories of Category:Occupations by language 08:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  • User:Wilsonbiggs: Good, except some of the categories are way too big, like the french writers one. Narrow it down a little. Wilsonbiggs (talk) 21:18, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
• User:TonyTheTiger, I have spent the better part of the week overhauling Category:Families according to the layout seen on the right side of User:TonyTheTiger#Categories Created. In particular, I have created Category:Families by profession, Category:Families by religion, & Category:Families by ancestry to supplement the already existent Category:Families by nationality. TonyTheTiger 17:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
• User:Strangerer: I am working on Category:Images by subject, which has been listed as in need of attention since 4 December 2006! It seems many images are categorized haphazardly or not categorized at all, creating a huge problem for Special:Uncategorized images. I became interested in this category after attempting to spot images not tagged with copyright indications, but it is so overpopulated that it's not useful for this purpose. Many images are categorized haphazardly, or there is a "Category:Images of whatever" listed in "Category:Whatever" but not in an images parent category. I'd like it to be easier to both spot potential copyright problems and make it easier to find images that may already exist on Wikipedia by starting with Category:Images by subject. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 11:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• User:Fishal: I am working on Category:Lutheranism. I am sorting most of the articles in that category into existing sub-categories. Once I'm finished with that, some of the sub-categories need to be further subdivided (particularly a new one I just created, Category:Lutheran organizations). Fishal 01:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
• User:Lighthead: All categories that I happen to stumble upon. Lighthead 20:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
• User:Dbiel: I am working in Category:Education and its sub categories

• Category:Education - Finished cleaning out this parent category - will try to maintain it.
• Category:Schools - Finished cleaning out this parent category - will try to maintain it
• Category:Glossary of education-related terms needs a lot of work, but a plan needs to be worked out first. Not sure where to start.
• Category:Education in San Diego County, California and Category:Education in San Diego, California these are a mess, trying to sort them out
• cleaning up Category:Schools in the United States by state

updated: Dbiel ^(Talk) 21:36, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

• User:CaveatLector: I have created the categories Category:Greco-Roman mythology in popular culture and am currently placing in it all articles that are relevant (this started when Hydra in popular culture came up for deletion and I realized that the services of all of these "**** in popular culture" articles serve a better purpose as categories. I added G-R myth in popular culture to the main Category:Mythology in popular culture and I also created Category:Greco-Roman mythology in comics as a subcategory to the former and began (and hopefully nearly finished) changing those Greco-Roman related comic book articles from Category:Mythology in comics to the Greco-Roman specific subcat and added that subcategory to the "Mythology in comics" category. (In short, I placed these categories, which were jumbled, in a line: Myth in popular culture, Myth in comics, G-R myth in comics). I am hoping to do the same with the category Category:Norse mythology in popular culture. Phew! Lot's of work ahead, any help is more than welcomed! CaveatLector^Talk 12:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
• User:Robert Daoust: I am working on Category:Emotion as a step in WikiProject Psychology goals to "Construct a coherent framework for categorization of psychology articles". See 'Current discussions' hereunder for more details. Robert Daoust 01:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Biochemza: WikiProject Cell Signaling is working on categorising cell signaling and signal transduction articles. This includes moving multiple categories into sub-categories of cell signaling. 11:15, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
• Tirkfl^talk: I am putting all lists with alphabetical taxonomic data in the category Category:Taxonomic lists (genera, alphabetic). 08:41, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Finished genera lists, moved on to species lists. – Tirkfl^talk 10:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Lquilter - Working on Category:Organizations and Category:Awards. --Lquilter 21:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• KathrynLybarger - sorting Category:American actors, mostly by medium -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 17:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• Megata Sanshiro - sorting various areas in Category:Video games to make it look a bit more encyclopedic. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 15:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Mdebets - organising the category Category:Archaeological sites by country, so that all entries for all countries are organised the same way. Mdebets (talk) 15:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
• Mrg3105 - Initiated a category restructuring sub-project in Military History Project here, and would very much appreciate contributions by others --mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 04:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
• User:Zzmonty - Initiated a mapping of the Wikipedia categories to Library of Congress Classification; Universal Decimal Classification; and Dewey Decimal Classification. I created the template {{infobox catalog |DDC=DDC |LCC=LCC |UDC=UDC }}

category:psychology or category:computer science have this template added.Zzmonty (talk) 20:48, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I pointed to this in a talk about Wikipedia as Knowledge Oranization System and created a more elaborated mapping system in the German Wikipedia (see de:Vorlage:Kategorienmapping and de:Kategorie:Vorlage:SKOSlink) which includes different mapping types of SKOS. -- JakobVoss (talk) 10:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• User:FingersOnRoids - Creating algae family categories, given the recent surge in articles on algae genera. Here's just a few:
  • Category:Brachysiraceae
  • Category:Actiniscaceae
  • Category:Phyllophoraceae‎
  • Category:Rhabdosphaeraceae
  • Category:Gonyaulacaceae
  • Category:Dumontiaceae
  • Category:Rhodomelaceae
  • Category:Cystocloniaceae
  • FingersOnRoids 17:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• User:MissionInn.Jim - Mostly completed collecting and organizing all articles in Category:Riverside County, California and Category:Riverside, California. MissionInn.Jim (talk) 14:31, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• User:Mar4d - Mostly creating Pakistan-related categories. Mar4d (talk) 05:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
• User:Redheylin - Performance arts, thought etc. Redheylin (talk) 17:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
• Mheart (talk) 17:45, 1 December 2011 (UTC): Planned work on sorting articles listed in Category:Literary characters to their more specific subcategories.

Current discussions

Please list any pages where discussions about categorization are taking place. Please date the entry and add your name.

• Category_talk:Israeli_settlers#cat_scope - discussion about who is a Foo-ian or a Foo-er (e.g. New Yorker, Chicagoan, Sydneysider, etc). Joe407 (talk) 07:42, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)
• See my talk page. --Crusio (talk) 21:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
• Category talk:Science fiction writers#Medical fiction writers. Wasn't sure where to raise this. HairyWombat (talk) 19:37, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Women's History#.22Women_in_history.22_wikipedia_categories:_creating_more.3F We have a potentially huge list of categories we need to create, and we need some advice from experienced Categories people. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic | talk | contribs) 19:46, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football#Non-playing staff Coyets (talk) 15:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football#Managers and non-playing staff Coyets (talk) 14:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 October 2 RockMagnetist (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Templates

• {{WikiProject Categories}} - use this on talk pages of interest to this WikiProject
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Category namespace - a list of maintenance templates for category namespace

Participants

If you would like to take part then add your signature to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Participants page and a description of any areas in which you may be interested.

Members may add the {{User WP Categories}} userbox:

	This user is a member of WikiProject Categories.

...or the {{User WikiProject Categories}} userbox:

Cat	This user is part of WikiProject Categories, which aims to improve article categorization on Wikipedia.

Useful pages

Feel free to add sub-categories and new links to those pages that you believe will assist those helping with this project.

You may wish to view all subpages of this page.

General information

Resource	Description
Wikipedia:Categorization	Introduction to categorization.
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)	Discusses naming conventions for categories.
Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates	Discusses the three different ways to group and organize articles.

WikiProject Categories-related pages

Resource	Description
/uncategorized	Taskforce page for categorizing and patrolling for uncategorized articles.
Category:Wikipedia categorization	Category page listing our project pages.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Current subprojects	WikiProject Categories subprojects.
Category:WikiProjects	Category page containing list of WikiProjects and helpful resources.
Category:Category needed	Category containing articles that need categorization.
Category:Uncategorized pages	Category containing pages that need categorization.
Special:UncategorizedPages	Special page for uncategorized pages.
Uncategorized Categories	Special page for uncategorized categories.

Advanced resources

Resource	Description
Wikimedia stats:Category Overview Index	Dumps of the category tree.
Wikipedia:Database_reports#Categories	Page containing generated reports about categories.
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion	Where deletion, merging, and renaming of categories is discussed.

Miscellaneous

Resource	Description
Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting	Similar WikiProject for stubs.
Portal:Contents	Browse Wikipedia's contents.
Portal:Contents/Overviews	Browse Wikipedia's contents overviews.

Essays

• Wikipedia:Categories are different from articles
• Wikipedia:Categories vs lists
• Wikipedia:Categorising fiction
• Wikipedia:Do not write articles using categories
• Wikipedia:Overcategorization/Intersection of location and occupation

• User:Alan Liefting/Essays/On categorisation

Directory of WikiProjects

WikiProject Council

Guide to WikiProjects