This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page. |
This page in a nutshell: Do not create categories for every single verifiable fact in articles. This only makes the category system more crowded and less easy to navigate. |
Categorization is a Wikipedia feature used to group pages for ease of navigation, and correlating similar information. However, not every verifiable fact (or the intersection of two or more such facts) in an article requires creating an associated category. For some article topics, this could potentially result in hundreds of categories, most of which aren't particularly relevant. This may also make it more difficult to find any particular category for a specific article. Such overcategorization is also known as "category clutter".
To address these concerns, this page lists types of categories that should generally be avoided. Based on existing guidelines and previous precedent at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, such categories, if created, are likely to be deleted.