User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Help!/@comment-5532276-20140615201806/@comment-188432-20140619135355

Minimum number of pages for a category is not an absolute hard and fast rule, and hence you won't find such a rule at T:CAT. But Shambala's right to say that we like to see three pages per category. And, indeed, I'd go even stronger than that and say that every effort should be made to avoid categories where only one or two pages will be foreseeably categorised. This is why you will occasionally find that the deletion rationale for an excised category is, "Categories should have three pages".

For instance, there's not much point to a category like, Songs the Second Doctor played on his recorder in The Web of Fear. There's only one. There's ever only going to be one. So we don't create that category.

However there are cases where you will find legitimate 1-page categories here.

Sometimes, categories are created where there is a reasonable expectation that the category will contain more pages. So we might create Songs the Third Doctor sang, even when we can only readily name "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire", because we know he sang to himself on multiple occasions.

On other occasions, we create categories with only one page because it makes structural sense in terms of the overall category tree. This is particularly — but not exclusively — true of our real world crew categories, such as Doctor Who crew. There are some jobs that, at least when the categories were created, had only one person who had performed that particular job. But to make the categories easily searchable, it was necessary to create a category that would probably never have three people. A good example of this is Doctor Who technical co-ordinators.

Even better examples are to be had by looking at SJA crew. Since this was a "smaller" show, it had fewer people on staff. But we nevertheless made the category structure mimic Doctor Who crew so that people more familiar with the DW crew structure wouldn't get lost. Hence, you'l find that SJA stunt co-ordinators, for example, has only one page. But it's a good thing to have around because it matches Torchwood stunt co-ordinators and Doctor Who stunt co-ordinators.

So while we do generally say that three pages are required, it's not — because it can't be — an absolute rule. It can be broken if it logically aids in making the category tree more navigable or more logical — or if there's a reasonable expectation that the category might someday get three pages.

If you're in doubt as to whether a category should exist, it's a good idea to ask here.