Tardis:Don't over-categorise
From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Don't just throw a lot of categories on an article and hope you've got the right one in there somewhere. Choose only the most specific categories.
A lot of new editors think that the more categories an article has, the better. This isn't true. Instead, the better policy is to choose only the most specific categories which apply.
Consequently, attention must be paid to the point any category seeks to make. Categories which hope to organise pages by minor truths can be deleted, even if the category passes other rules, like T:CAT NAME.
Examples of categories that would fall foul of this rule include, but aren't necessarily limited to, ones that:
- Are too broad — People who at one time lived on Earth; Actors from the United Kingdom; Stories that include the TARDIS, and the like. Since all of these are extremely common virtues in the broader DWU, the category would add relatively little of value to the page. Moreover, the category would be very hard to ever complete.
- Are overly specific - Stories directed by Euros Lyn and written by Russell T Davies and produced by Phil Collinson; Humans who went to Philadelphia and touched the Liberty Bell during 1976; Incarnations of the Doctor that played cricket in sub-Saharan Africa in 1896. At this level of detail, you should just include the fact in an article rather than creating a category.
- Reveal personal information about living persons or are (even potentially) offensive - Actors who are over 50 as of 2012; Directors who have been reported as gay by the British press; Stunt people who wear a size 6; Actors who have been divorced more than twice, Producers who are Scientologists, and the like. Categories about living persons should really only relate to their work in the DWU. They should never venture into anything even remotely personal.
- Focus on minor details or are otherwise frivolous - Individuals who have a mobile phone, Individuals who prefer tea over coffee, Stories with the word 'blue' in the title; Stories broadcast during a real life British election year; Crew members with the surname of Smith, and the like. Even accepting that one person's frivolity is another's necessity, the very point of T:OVER-CAT is to ensure that only the most germane categories survive. If a category of yours gets deleted by an admin, remember that they are making a good faith effort to determine "frivolity". If you feel strongly that your category has been deleted wrongly, you cannot recreate it without taking the matter to the forums, and having other community members overrule the initial deletion.
- Are (virtual) synonyms — If your new category name is materially the same as one that already exists, don't be surprised if your work gets deleted. Consult a thesaurus and try some word order variations in the search bar before creating a new category. A little bit of investigation before you create a category will likely save you time in the long run.
- Abuse other users - Users that are mean to me, Users that suck, or similar categories will probably get you banned under T:ATTACKS.
Some things to think about before creating a new category are:
- This wiki is over a decade old. If it's missing a category you'd like to create, there is likely a reason for it.
- Tardis is equipped with DPL, a querying system that can help you generate a list of pages according to various features. So if you wanted to know which stories contained the word 'blue', you could do it through DPL a lot more quickly and accurately than by creating a new category.
- We also enjoy the use of SMW, an even more sophisticated querying system. SMW can help you create queries along several different vectors, making categories like "Stories directed by Euros Lyn and written by Russell T Davies and produced by Phil Collinson" completely unnecessary.
