Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes

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Template:Guideline

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 synergy, each one complementing the other.

The below focuses on the comparison of these techniques from the perspective of how they group information. Another way of looking at this, the perspective of how each of these techniques has its own web-navigation flow specifics, is further discussed at Wikipedia:Easy navigation.

Increasingly, multiple entries to fields of knowledge are provided, for instance, for symphonies:

Contents

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Categories

Template:Main Example of a category page. Every page in the article namespace should have at least one category. 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 the following 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 usually 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. (A good way to understand this exception is that if an article exists, and then a category is created on the same subject as the article, it should not cause the article to be removed from any of its categories.)

Exceptions should also be considered when the article subject has a relevance to the parent category that is not expressed by the subcategory's definition. For instance, if Category:Guillotined French Revolution figures was the only subcategory of Category:French Revolution figures, it would not make sense to remove major figures of the French Revolution solely because of the means of their death.

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.

For articles without any stable category, Template:Tl tag can be used to bring attention (although Special:Uncategorizedpages exists).

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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. Categories are organized within Wikipedia into a web of knowledge starting with Category:Fundamental.
  3. Categories are good for exploratory browsing of Wikipedia.
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Disadvantages of categories

  1. Alphabetical order only (though you can control the alphabetisation). Cannot be organized into sections and subsections on a single page, each with appropriate prefatory comments.
  2. Listings cannot be annotated (e.g. length of a river).
  3. They cannot contain invisible links to talk pages, which cause edits to those pages to appear when the user clicks on "related changes". (Thus: [[Talk:ABCology| ]])
  4. Red links to not-yet-existing articles cannot be added to categories.
  5. Categories are not operational on most mirror sites.
  6. Categories can impose extra load on the servers, since they can't be served from the cache.
  7. Cannot include alternative names for the same item.
  8. Newbies do not understand how to add an item, how to link new categories into existing schemes, or POV concerns.
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Lists

Template:Main Example of a list. Lists make no exception to policies and guidelines applicable to all main or article namespace pages.

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Advantages of lists

  1. Lists can be annotated. 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 (red links); 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. An article can be listed several times or in different ways in the same list, or shown both in its major category as well as in several different subcategories, without cluttering the article with crossreferences.
  4. Lists can link to items inside other articles.
  5. Lists can include invisible links to discussion pages, so that clicking on "related changes" will include those. Format: [[Talk:Omphalology| ]].
  6. Lists are easily edited by newbies who are less familiar with Wikipedia quality guidelines
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Disadvantages of lists

  1. Not auto-linked, as categories are.
  2. May be redundant with categories if not formatted, annotated, or equipped with invisible links (see above).
  3. Longer lists may be a subject of spam and vandalism
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Article series boxes

Template:Main Example of an article series box. Article series boxes (or navigational templates) are boxes with links to other related articles. Examples include presidents of the United States, movies in the Friday the 13th Series, or Narnia books. They may be used for small and more or less complete sets. The importance of the subject matter is not a consideration.

A series should have some 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 some structure — that structure 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?
  • Are the elements of the box all going to generate articles substantial enough that the box will not look like an unmanageable 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.

Related pages regarding templates:

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Advantages of article series boxes

  1. Provide a consistent look and navigation system for related articles (though not between different topics — there is no standard format; though see Wikipedia:Template standardisation).
  2. Faster to navigate than a category.
  3. Give immediate information to equivalent elements
  4. For presenting a series of articles in a chronological order, series boxes are often most appropriate. Example: template:Princess Royal (there are two "Mary"s and two "Anne"s in that list, which makes the chronological way of presenting these princesses an asset to a merely alphabetically ordered presentation of these same names)
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Disadvantages of article series boxes

  1. Often replaceable with a category. It can be difficult to give more detail than a category can give without the box becoming unmanageably large.
  2. Article series boxes can become ugly or pointless, e.g. by unsightly coloring schemes, size, number of them on the same page,... For this reason article series boxes need to be self-evident, while they can't contain much text for definitions or explanations.
  3. Often inadvertently push a POV and suggest that one aspect of a topic is more important than others, being used to advertise obscure topics in prominent places, or asserting project proprietorship. Many templates go to WP:TFD because they appear to push POV. Trying to remedy this by adding more series boxes has might lead to the disadvantage described in the previous point.
  4. Can alter the page lay-out without the reason thereof showing on the page itself (e.g. when the series box contains a "NOTOC" instruction, an unclosed "div",...)
  5. Article series boxes work best as un-subst'ed templates, which however also increases server load.
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