User:Alan Liefting/Essays/Over-categorisation

...a quick initial draft:

Over-categorisation

The idea of over-categorisation can have two meanings on Wikipedia: it is the creation of too many categories or it could be the adding of too many redundant or unneeded categories to an article. The WikiProject Categories has a guideline on over-categorisation but it only applies to the former situation.

Here are examples of over-categorisation based on actual edits:

• Category:Internet history should not contain:
  • Wiki but the History of wikis is perfectly valid
  • Google but History of Google is valid
  • Arundel Elementary School simply because it was the first school in the US to have the Internet. That sort of information should be in an History of the Internet in the United States article which is then a valid article for the category

Further examples

• Internet Explorer 9 had Category:Internet history and Category:Upcoming software - an interesting juxtaposition of the past and the future! [1]