Category Streamlining

With the support of the admins, I will be taking on the project of streamlining this wiki's categories.

Categories form an important part in the structure of a wiki, so it will be important to know how this wiki would like categories to be used. First I will focus on tidying up duplicate categories and creating wanted categories. Once that is done, I would like to know which base category structure would be best for this wiki: filters or folders. Currently it appears to be a mix of both.

Important concept – Categories in wikis are not like tags on forums, as that makes for an unstructured and unorganised wiki

Filter Categories

Filter categories contain more articles in the top level categories, and less in the sub-categories. Therefore, selecting a sub-category filters the contents of the top level category, and any one article will appear in each level.

Folder Categories

Folder categories contain less articles in the top level categories, and more in the sub-categories. Therefore, a sub-category acts like a folder for all the content related to that category, and the articles within do not usually appear in a higher level category.

It would also be worth deciding whether Category:Content is an all or nothing category, since every article should be within one of its subcategories anyway. This is a slightly different decision to filters and folders due to the breadth of content a wiki contains.

For a couple of exterior examples, the Fable Wiki uses Folders with Content as nothing, and Elder Scrolls Wiki uses Filters, again with content as nothing.

Please leave your thoughts on the options, and any other questions or comments on categories.

Note: Without direction, I will be working towards Filter structure and Content-nothing.

Process

1. Work through Special:Categories, tidying duplicates and general tidying
2. Work through Special:WantedCategories, creating those that are needed
   • Put the articles remaining in the Wanted Categories elsewhere so they are no longer wanted.
   • Check Special:CategoryTree to make sure categories are logically branched
3. Work through Special:AllPages category list, sorting categories into categories
4. Work through Special:AllPages article list, sorting categories on articles
   • Articles from one series should all be in the same category (like Category:Assassin's Creed)

Other useful pages

• Special:UncategorizedCategories
• Special:UncategorizedPages
• Special:UncategorizedFiles
• Special:UncategorizedTemplates
• Special:UnusedCategories
• Special:MostCategories

Locked pages

• User:Tawatson - has the Category:Acheivements; spelling mistake, should be Category:Achievements; Category:Wiki is unnecessary since this is a wiki; however, do you need your user page categorized at all?
• Admin Area - has the categories Category:Admins and Category:Administrators; doesn't need both, stick to Category:Administrators for consistency; also has Category:Site Navigation; superfluous, categories are all about site navigation
• News - same as above, also has Category:Cheevo and Category:Wiki, unnecessary
• Cheevo Archive Wiki:Code of Conduct - has superfluous categories Code, Of, Conduct, Rules and Regulations (Policy is sufficient to cover all of these)

Structure

• Browse categories:
  • Content: all content in here
  • Files: all files in here
  • Organization: organization, administration and maintenance (no content in here)

• Game articles:
  • Category:Games
  • Game-specific categories
  • Platform categories
  • Dev & Pub categories
  • Genre categories

• Cheevo articles:
  • Game-specific categories
  • Category:Achievements and/or Category:Trophies
  • Platform categories

Categories for investigating

• Action / Action Adventure do we need both?
• Campaign What is the purpose of this category?
• Feature / Featured Not sure what these are for, in the context of what is in them; regardless, I think we only need one of them
• Online I assume this refers to cheevos gained only through online play?
• Policy / Rules / Regulations Surely we only need one of these?
• Site Navigation Is it necessary? Surely that's what categories are for in general
• Source What is the purpose of this category?
• Valve Corporation / Valve We don't need them both
• Wiki In my view this serves the same purpose as the Organization category set, so probably is not needed