Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories.html

Shortcut: WP:CATP

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.

1 Current projects
2 Current discussions
3 Templates
4 Participants
5 Useful pages

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 Cat:Pathology and its subcategories - the biggest changes are the new categories Cat:Gross pathology, and Cat:Histopathology, into which I'm sorting appropriate disease-associated entities (though not diseases themselves, since they have an existing category, Cat:Diseases). A new stub category - Cat: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:
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 (eg 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 hardcore punk bands with Category:Hardcore 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 existant 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)

Current discussions

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

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)
I've started a discussion about some reforms for the Categories for Discussion page (WP:CFD). Please take a look here. Thanks. -- User:Sam 10:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I've tried to start discussions about categorization in Category talk:People and Category talk:Lists. --JeffW 19:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose another sub-cat for Cat:Films based on books by author : Cat:Films based on Agatha Christie books, as it seem nearly all her works have been adapted, some more than once. Please feel free to comment over at Category talk:Films based on books by author. Her Pegship 23:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Discussion at Category talk:Activists on categorizing activists and more generally people involved in movements. Historical discussion started at Category talk:Animal rights movement (which consolidated activists and other movement-related topics into one category) ... moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animal rights#Animal rights subcats and #Adding my 2cents ... then moved to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 5#Category:Animal rights activists. --lquilter 00:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Discussion and vote on using the term Human settlements, Human communities or Human settlements and communities at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)#Settlements SilkTork 15:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC).
Discussion on removing Category:In popular culture and all "in popular culture" subcats: Category_talk:In_popular_culture#Proposal_to_delete_all_.22In_popular_culture.22_cats_and_articles. Let's Do It! SilkTork 14:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Discussion at Category Talk:Emotion. Main talk page until now for this subject is at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Psychology/Emotion. Robert Daoust 01:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Biochemza: WikiProject Cell signaling's Talk page. 11:25, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
WT:PHARM:CAT - a discussion regarding the categorization of pharmacology articles in an attempt to create a working (1) categorization scheme and (2) guidelines for categorization. —G716 <^T·_C> 09:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Templates

Template: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.

/uncategorized
Category:Category needed
Category:Wikipedia categorization
Category:WikiProjects
Wikimedia stats:Category Overview Index– Dumps of the category tree (very handy)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion
Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates
Wikipedia:Categorization
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Current subprojects – Contains many useful links to other projects
Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting
Portal:Contents
Portal:Contents/Overviews
Special:Uncategorizedpages
Toolserver:WikiSense/Category Scan
User:Pearle