It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though
occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect
consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the
talk page.
When naming a category, one should be particularly careful and choose its name accurately. Moving non-conventionally categorized pages to another category name (see {{
Category redirect}}) imposes an additional overhead – an edit for each article and subcategory. Also, try to avoid names that are too long or too short. Short, straight-forward names, are preferred for categories, though it may be necessary at times to deviate from this principle for
clarity or
disambiguation.
Note that in many instances a topic category and a set category have similar names, the topic category being singular and the set category plural. For example,
Opera is a topic category (containing all articles relating to the topic), while
Operas is a set category (containing articles about specific operas). Be careful to choose the right one when categorizing articles.
Do not write
the category structure in names. Example: "
Monarchs", not "People – Monarchs". This includes creating categories that are subpages of other categories.
Choose category names that can stand alone, independent of the way a category is connected to other categories. Example: "
Geography terminology stubs", not "Terminology" (a subcategory of "
Geography stubs").
Categories for articles
Standard article
naming conventions apply; in particular, use
sentence case, do not use
title case. Specifically, do not
capitalize regular nouns except when they come at the beginning of the category name.
When naming, use words and phrases which exist in
verifiablereliable sources (particularly for
technical subjects), so that those sources may be used to support inclusion of information.
When a topic requires
disambiguation, any category eponymously named for that topic should include the same form of disambiguation, even if no other articles are likely to have an
eponymous category.
If there are more than a few
lists in a particular subject area, it may be appropriate to create a specific subcategory that only contains the list pages and no other types.
When placing list pages in such a category, use a
sort key to adjust the page title to exclude the starting words "List of", or all lists would appear under "L". For example, when adding List of Soviet Republics to the category, using [[Category:Lists of countries|Soviet Republics]] and will make it be sorted in the S section. See also
Category:Lists.
All
WikiProject categories should have "WikiProject" (or "WikiProjects") as part of the name. Note that this does not apply to the names of categories that projects might create for the use of assessments. In these cases, the advice given in
Project Categories, which conforms to
Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments is advised, though not mandatory.