Wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized

From Global Warming Art

The following page is a local copy of the Wikipedia page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized. (more info)

Category needed
October 2009 14
Undated articles 0
All articles 18
This is a task force (as well as a patrol) to categorize uncategorized articles (see left).
Optionally, add yourself to /participants and put {{User wikipedia/Uncat}} to your user page.

Other tasks

Traditionally, our primary task has been to clear out the oldest populated uncategorized-by-date-category (which is listed on the top of this page). Here are some other things you can work on:

  • Category:Category needed, uncategorized pages divided by topic and type. Good if you are particularly comfortable with a particular topic.
  • Category:Better category needed, for articles that already are in one or more categories but need to be put in additional ones. (still 142 entries at 30-08-2009)
  • This list of articles uncategorised at the time of the last database dump, but that were categorised in the one before.

Hints and tips

  • Consider using an edit summary that links to this page.
  • Take your time: it is more important to ensure a useful, precise categorization of articles than to clear the backlog at high speed.
  • Use the most specific category you can find and remember that an article can often be placed in multiple categories. While even partial categorization is of value, try to avoid placing articles only in very large categories that are not typically used for browsing, such as Category:2001 albums or Category:Living people.
  • Look at similar articles to see what categories are available. Clicking on internal links near the beginning the article is often helpful.
  • When in doubt, add a broad category along with Category:Better category needed or just skip it.
  • Articles with only stub categories still need to be included in non-stub categories.
  • Some articles with the {{uncat}} tag have already been categorized; simply remove the tag in that case.
  • Check if the article needs to undergo one of the deletion processes (speedy/prod/afd), or if merging/redirecting/renaming the article would be appropriate. Also, watch out for articles with copyright violations.
  • If an article has both a {{prod}} tag and an {{uncat}} tag, then either categorize it anyway or remove the uncat tag and put it on your watchlist, making sure it gets deleted.
  • The search box has a nifty drop-down list feature; use it to your advantage. You can check to see if a category exists without navigating away from the article. Sometimes more than one category shows up after you've typed it in – this may mean the category in question is a parent category, and that there may be a more specific category the article can go into.
  • Albums should be categorized by artist, year of release, and genre(s). Same for songs.
  • Use {{Lifetime|year of birth|year of death|sort key}} instead of {{DEFAULTSORT:sort key}} [[Category:BIRTH births]] [[Category:DEATH deaths]]

Useful links

Toolbox