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Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by John Gohde (talk | contribs) at 23:05, 5 April 2005 (→Advantages of lists: What was listed as an advantage of categories, is actually just as much an advantage of lists.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Wikipedia offers three ways to create groupings of articles: categories, lists, and article series boxes. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and each is appropriate in different circumstances.

These methods should not be considered to be in competition with each other. Rather, they are most effective when used in synergistic combination, each one complimenting the other.


Categories

Categories should be on major topics that are likely to be useful to someone reading the article.

Article: Michael Jackson
Useful category: Category:Pop singers
Not useful: Category:Musicians whose first name starts with M

A category is probably inappropriate if the answer to these questions is "no":

  • Is it possible to write a few paragraphs or more on the subject of a category, explaining it?
  • If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why it's there? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article?

An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used, however — categories become less effective the more there are on a given article.

An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, e.g. Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software — except when the article defines a category as well as being in a higher category, e.g. Ohio is in both Category:U.S. states and Category:Ohio.

Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category. Especially see Wikipedia:Categorization of people.

An exception to the above rules is Category:Wikipedia maintenance, which contains categories intended to be temporary.

Every category should be a subcategory of some other category. You can start from the top of the category hierarchy at Category:Fundamental. If you think a good parent probably exists but you just can't find it, add your new category to Category:Orphaned categories.

Advantages of categories

  1. Auto-linking. Create a link to a category on an article page, and a corresponding link to that article will be visible on the category page.
  2. Multi-directional navigation. A category can contain multiple subcategories, and can also be part of several categories.
  3. All categories are linked together, created a web of knowledge.

Disadvantages of categories

  1. Alphabetical order only (though you can control the alphabetisation).
  2. The default user skin places the display of categories at the very bottom of an article. Thus, visitors may not be even aware of their existence.
  3. Their purpose may not be immediately apparent to new visitors to Wikipedia, since their names being short are not very descriptive of their key role in navigation on Wikipedia.
  4. Categories are not operational in the vast majority of mirror sites.
  5. Navigation can be cumbersome, especially compaired to navigational templates.

Lists

The policy on lists is generally fairly permissive. While they need to meet the same standards of noteworthiness of any other Wikipedia article, these standards are, as always, fairly lax, and lists are generally permitted despite percieved redundancies with categories or boxes.

Advantages of lists

  1. Lists can be annotated. That is they can include additional information beyond the item name. For example, a list of soccer world championship teams can also list when the championship was won.
  2. Lists can include items for which there are no articles; categories can only list things for which there are articles, unless stubs are created.
  3. List items can be sorted using a variety of methods (alphabetically, chronologically, by size, by color, etc.)
  4. Lists can include the contents of related groups of items on the same page.
  5. Just like the index of a book, an article can be listed several times or in different ways in the same list.
  6. It often desirable and physically possible with a list to have an article shown both in its major category as well as in several different subcategories.
  7. All lists could be linked together, creating a web of knowledge, by use of a complete set of glossaries in the form of annotated lists.

Disadvantages of lists

  1. Not auto-linked, as categories are.
  2. Lists can be redundant with categories, which were largely created to offer functionality that they lacked. In order not to be redundant, a list must do a significantly better job of presenting the articles than the respective category.

Article series boxes

See also: Wikipedia:Article series boxes policy (proposed), Wikipedia:Series templates, Wikipedia:Navigational templates

Article series boxes (or navigational templates) are boxes with links to other related articles. You should only use an article series box for an actual series — when it forms a complete linear series. Examples include presidents of the United States, movies in the Friday the 13th Series, or Narnia books. They may be used for other small and verifiably complete sets. The importance of the subject matter is not a consideration.

A series should have a natural ordering, whether chronological or otherwise. Alphabetical order is not preferable, as categories naturally arrange articles alphabetically, making a series box redundant. It is not enough that it is possible to organize the elements of a series in a linear order — that linear order should itself be useful. For example, a box for characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer by the order of listing in the opening credits is an ordering but is not useful, because it is unlikely that people would actually want to read the articles in that order. A category should be used instead.

As with categories, all the articles in a box should substantially deal with the subject of the box.

  • Is the subject of this box something that would be mentioned on every article in the series?
  • Is a given article in the series likely to mention the article before or after it in the series outside of the box?
  • Is someone likely to want to read the articles in this series in linear order?
  • Are the elements of the box all going to generate articles substantial enough that the box will not look like an unmanagable blight on an otherwise tidy computer monitor?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", a category or list is probably more appropriate.

If an article has more than one series box, it may be appropriate to convert some or all to categories.

For very long series, it is preferable to use incumbent series, which only show the elements of the series immediately preceding and succeeding the article.

Advantages of article series boxes

  1. Provide a consistent look and navigation system for related articles (though not between different fields).
  2. Faster to navigate then a category.

Disadvantages of article series boxes

  1. Almost always replaceable with a category. It can be difficult to give more detail than a category can give without the box becoming unmanagably large.
  2. Article series boxes are often considered unsightly.
  3. Can be used to suggest that one aspect of a topic is more important than others, resulting in POV advocacy. Many templates go to WP:TFD because they appear to push POV. People often add more series boxes to try to remedy this, exacerbating complaints of unsightliness.

See also

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