User blog:SsVivid/Evaluating Categories

Categories - specifically whether or not some of them are unnecessary and the desire to clean the list up - have been a pretty hot topic among some of the more attentive wiki users. So, with no further ado, this is the list of our current categories. I'm going to sort them into groups that identify them (according to my personal opinion, this is hardly anything final) as "beneficial," "unnecessary," and "other" for categories I'm not sure about.

Keep in mind that I'm evaluating them on the grounds that a beneficial category successfully groups together a fairly broad genre of articles and is likely to be a useful tool in ways that can't otherwise be achieved. Also, ideally a category would not be redundant with another category. For example, a beneficial category would be like "Knights," which groups together a very common genre of character and creates a list of them that prevents interested people from having to sort through the entire character list to find them. On the other hand, a category like "Demoness" isn't so necessary because it is redundant with the pre-existing category "Demons" and is specific to a level that is impractical for searching.

Beneficial Catagories

 * Adventurer


 * Aerendyls


 * Animal


 * Antagonist


 * Archives


 * Ardougne


 * Armadylian


 * Assassin


 * Bandosians


 * Blakan Family


 * Blog posts


 * Buildings


 * Category templates


 * Characters


 * Combat


 * Community


 * Construct


 * Content


 * Cult


 * Deceased


 * Demons


 * Dragon


 * Dragonkin


 * Drake Family


 * Dwarf


 * Elf


 * Es'ir Clan


 * Families


 * Forums


 * Fremennik


 * Genic Family


 * Giants
 * Gnomes
 * Goblins
 * Gorajo
 * Guides
 * Guild
 * Guthixian
 * Humans
 * Icyene
 * Incomplete Articles
 * Isylus
 * Karamjan
 * Kharidian
 * Kivail
 * Knight
 * Le'Gaunt
 * League of United Kingdoms
 * Location
 * Lore
 * Mage
 * Magic
 * Magnushuun
 * Mahjarrat
 * Melee
 * Members of the Ashen Covenant
 * Members of the Caedo Brotherhood
 * Members of the Vekon Family
 * Menaphite
 * Mioré Family
 * Moon Clan
 * Mysterious Characters
 * Necromancers
 * Noble
 * Organization
 * POC
 * Political Figure
 * Protagonist
 * Races
 * Rangers
 * Religion
 * Royalty
 * Saradominist
 * Shade
 * Sicarius
 * Temple Knights
 * Traven
 * Trolls
 * Tyrelen
 * TzHaar
 * Vampyre
 * Wars
 * Werewolves
 * Yanille
 * Youth
 * Zamorakian
 * Zarosian

Unnecessary Categories

 * Bandosian (Redundant with Bandosians)
 * Biography (Redundant with Characters)
 * Business (Redundant with Businesses)
 * Businesses (Redundant with the less-specific "Organizations")
 * Carter's Characters (This is what user pages are for)
 * Chaotic (This is a description, not a category of things)
 * Demoness (Redundant with Demons)


 * Evil (Vague, and somewhat redundant with Antagonist)
 * Family (redundant with Families)
 * Files (All articles are files, thank you)
 * God Wars (Anything by this description is available on the RS Wiki)
 * Hero (Repetitive with Adventurer, or vice versa)
 * Humor (I think this explains itself)
 * Icyenes (repetitive with Icyene and also incorrect grammar)
 * King (This is redundant with "Royalty")
 * Locations (Redundant with Location)
 * Meme (We have an article dedicated to memes, that should be enough.)
 * Places (Redundant with Location)
 * Policy (Too specific, covered by other categories like POC and In-Character History)
 * Queeny's characters (Use your user pages)
 * Runescape Lore (redundant with Lore)
 * SWAG (yeah.)
 * Saradomin (Redundant with Saradominist, Saradomin already has his own article)
 * Trivia (redundant with every other category. Almost every page has a trivia/other section, an entire articles should not be committed to just trivia.)
 * Unfinished Articles (Redundant with Incomplete Articles)
 * Videos (This does not describe the contents of the article, and an articles shouldn't be committed entirely to hosting videos.)
 * Wanderer (Redundant with "Adventurer")
 * Watercooler (What? Just, what?)
 * Weapons. (Redundant with Melee, and has a typo in the category name)

Other

 * Bard (Too uncommon for its own category? Consider "Entertainers?")
 * Browse (What does this apply to?)
 * Ancient Magic user (These are a little redundant with "Mage," but may still be useful.)
 * Dark Magic user (These are a little redundant with "Mage," but may still be useful.)
 * Lunar Magic user (See above)
 * Modern Magic user (see above)
 * Faction (What does this apply to?)
 * In-Character History (This is relevant, but also very obvious. Some have mentioned displeasure with it.)
 * School (Are there enough schools to call for this?)
 * Storyteller (Uncommon, consider "entertainers")
 * Admiral (Too specific, consider something like "Military")

Conclusion
Please, discuss this, voice your own thoughts on the subject, give your own opinions on the judgment I made of these categories.