Wikipedia:Overcategorization: Difference between revisions
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:As a rule of thumb, if an award doesn't have an article, then a person should not be categorized by receiving it. It may nevertheless be useful to note the award in the article. Nominees should not be categorized, but put into a list instead. The sole exception to that is the [[:Category:Academy Award winners|Academy Award]]s, which is under debate. |
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;Inclusion in a published list |
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Revision as of 10:26, 30 November 2006
![]() | The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. |
Categorization is a useful tool for finding and correlating articles. However, sometimes we tend to overcategorize; the more categories an article is in, the less meaningful all of them become. Hence, based on existing guidelines and WP:CFD precedent, this page lists types of categories that should be avoided. If created, categories of these types are very likely to be deleted.
General cases
- Not objectively defined
- Examples: Tall people, Notable architecture, Famous songs
- It is vague how tall a person should be to be part of this category, and hence it is not a useful categorization. In general categories should never contain words such as "famous" or "notable"; it is assumed that if the subject is not famous or notable, it doesn't belong in a category.
- Arbitrary inclusion limit
- Examples: People over six feet tall, Villages with more than 10,000 inhabitants, Disasters with more than 5,000 casualties
- There is no particular reason for choosing "six", "10,000", or "5,000" as cutoff points in these three cases. A village with 9,800 people is not meaningfully different from one with 10,100 people. A better way of representing this kind of information is to to put it in an article such as "List of villages in (locality) by size". Note that our software currently allows a table to be made sortable by any column. The obvious exception is categorizing by year, since making a category for each year is not arbitrary.
- Non-defining or trivial characteristics
- Example: People who own cats, Motorcycle riders, Blondes
- We should categorize by what is actually important in a person's life, such as their career, origin and major accomplishments. In contrast, someone's tastes in food, their favorite holiday destination, or the amount of tattoos they have are trivial. Such information may be interesting to put in the article, but is not useful for categorization. If you could easily leave something out of a biography, it is not a defining characteristic.
- Opinion on an issue
- Example: People who like ice cream, Politicians who favor legalizing drugs
- As above, holding an opinion is not a defining characteristic, and should not be a criterion for categorization, even if a reliable source can be found for the opinion. Categories such as "Republicans" should be reserved for people doing active work (direct or indirect) for the party, as opposed to merely voting for it.
- Gender, race and religion
- Example: Christian ice skaters, Female chemists
- Generally, people should only be categorized by gender, race or religion if this has significant bearing on their career. For instance, in sports, Christian ice skaters are not treated differently from Jewish or Muslim ice skaters. Similarly, in chemistry, a person's actions are more important than their gender (and there is no separate Nobel Prize for female chemists).
- Award winners and nominees
- Example: Michigan Red Herring Award nominees
- As a rule of thumb, if an award doesn't have an article, then a person should not be categorized by receiving it. It may nevertheless be useful to note the award in the article. Nominees should not be categorized, but put into a list instead. The sole exception to that is the Academy Awards, which is under debate.
- Inclusion in a published list
- Example: Top 40 songs
- Magazines and books regularly publish lists of the "top 10" (or some other number) in any particular field. Such lists tend to be subjective and somewhat arbitrary, and as such don't make for meaningful categorization. Additionally, since there are many of such lists, creating categories for all of them would add needless clutter to all relevant pages. Some particularly well-known and unique lists such as the Forbes 400 may constitute exceptions, although creating categories for them risks violating the publisher's copyright.
- Triple intersection
- Example: Italian composers born in 1850
- Many categories are an intersection of two traits, e.g. "Spanish architects". It is generally not useful to create categories as an intersection of three or more traits, as these tend to be overly narrow. Note that even intersections of two traits are not always useful if their main use is to split large categories.
- However, note that e.g. "Italian-American" denotes a single trait of ethnicity, not two separate origins; and note that e.g. "Ohio American" is a redundancy since "people from Ohio" are an obvious subset of "Americans".
- Subcategories creating large overlaps
- Example: 1962 New York Yankees team roster, Members of United States 92nd Congress
- Categories like this will likely add multiple categories to many articles, for instance if most of the 1962 team was also on the 1963 team. It is better to handle these with a single category, and create lists that detail the multiple instances.
Specific cases
- Actors by film, or films by actor
- Example: Starship Troopers actors, or Films starring John Travolta
- Since most films have several dozen otherwise-unrelated actors, and most actors play in several dozen otherwise-unrelated films, these categories would add unnecessary clutter to all pages on actors and films. This information is better represented by including a list of actors in the film article, and vice versa.
- In contrast, categorizing films by director is generally useful, because most films have only a single director, and directors tend to have their own styles.