Wikipedia:Bad_category_names

Wikipedia:Bad category names

Wikipedia:Bad category names

All done for now. This project is inactive until/unless it is updated.

Sometimes articles link to non-existent or malformed categories. If this can be taken care of just by fixing links in the articles (the link displays red) then the categories below can just be fixed and de-listed. If it requires actually deleting a category (the link shows blue) then it needs to be fixed and then listed on WP:CFD.

Suggestions

  • It would be nice if Categories showed in Previews, so that one could fix malformed categories without committing to the edit (doing a Save Page) first. -- Mwanner 21:13, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)
    They do; just scroll down to the very bottom of the page, past the edit box. -- Beland 7 July 2005 03:22 (UTC)

How to use these lists

Categories are "detected" in the below lists if they have weird, non-alphanumeric characters in the name. This may be an indication that either a syntax error was made on an article page (not unlikely if you only see one article for that category), or that the category should be renamed because it contains weird characters. If a category is listed here but does not have either of those problems, please add it to "Categories that appear to be ok". This will prevent it from being listed here in the future.

Categories should have two things: 1.) A description page, and 2.) Member articles and subcategories. A category might:

  • Have a description page but no articles or subcategories. (Blue, but not linked to from anywhere.) These should be listed on WP:CFD, or added to Category:Underpopulated categories if kept.
  • Have no description page but have member articles or subcategories. (Red, but linked to from other pages.) If the category is being kept, a description page should be added which specifies an appropriate parent category (like this: [[Category:NAME OF PARENT CATEGORY HERE]]). If the category is not being kept, the articles linking there should be moved to other categories, or at least removed from this one.
  • Have a description page and member articles or subcategories. (Blue, and linked from other pages.) This is the normal state of affairs. If a category like this needs to be renamed, please list it on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion (which also handles renaming).

Some category names appear black on the below lists. The script which produces automated lists does this because some category names that contain weird characters such that they cannot be linked to directly. You should still be able to reach these categories by visiting articles that link to them.

Character conventions

  • Namespace prefixes like "Wikipedia:" don't belong in category names. Use an alternative. For example, you can use "Wikipedia" as an adjective, without the colon.
  • Non-ASCII characters should be represented by their native UTF-8 (a Unicode representation) entity in category names. Neither HTML entities like & nor URL-encoded entities, like %2E should appear in category names as you see them in the wikitext when you edit a member article. You will see URL-encoded entities in URLs. (This, of course, is why it's easy to get confused and link to the wrong thing.)
  • Use "and" instead of "&" unless it is an integral part of a proper noun (e.g. "Law & Order").
  • To avoid the appearance of subpages, slashes should not appear in category names unless they are an integral part of a proper noun. (e.g. "OS/2") or unless there is another very good reason for having them. Try to rephrase or use hyphens instead (e.g. "Dallas-Fort Worth", "Minneapolis-St. Paul").

Categories that appear to be ok

Add false positives here. You can remove the list of member articles.

Links from outside the article namespace

From the user namespace

  • Category:"_+_CatName_+_" linked from: User:Jag123/monobook.js User:Onco_p53/monobook.js
  • Category:Orders_of_magnitude_($1) linked from User:Gsp/monobook.js
  • Category:Russian/Soviet__role__aircraft_19xx-19xx linked from: User:Jno/template1 User:Jno/template2
  • Category:Unification_Church)\n\n:I_made_that_edit_because_an_article,_[[Washington_Institute_for_Values_in_Public_Policy linked from: User_talk:Willmcw/archive4
  • Category:Wikipedians/Green_users linked from User:Promsan note left on talk page 22:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:Wikipedians/Robots linked from User:Promsan note left on talk page 22:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:Wikipedians/Surrealist_Wikipedians linked from User:Promsan note left on talk page 22:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:User:Ans/Forum

From talk pages

  • All fixed as of 12 June 2006.

Categories with specific problems

These just need to be fixed on the article page. MediaWiki masks these errors so readers don't notice them.

  • All fixed as of 16 August 2005.

Categories using & in the name

  • All fixed as of 12 June 2006.

Categories with other dubious characters

These should be renamed, or merged with the correct (UTF-8 encoded) category.

  • All done for now

Categories with slashes in the name

Slashes should be avoided in article and category names - see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Forward_slashes_and_dots.

  • All fixed as of 12 June 2006.

TV stations

See also: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 September 9#Television stations with slashes

  • All fixed as of 19 December 2010.

Wikipedia: categories

See also: Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_September_9 and Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 13#Categories starting Wikipedia:

For a full list, see here.

Wikipedians by alma mater: categories

Categories that should be deleted

See Wikipedia:Categories for deletion for instructions.

  • None at the moment

Categories that should be renamed

See Wikipedia:Categories for deletion for instructions.

  • None at the moment

Detected 29 Oct 2005 (unsorted)

For red links, you may need to visit the category and see if there are any articles in it. These are probably typos in one or two articles.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Wikipedia:Bad_category_names, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.