User blog:Theevina/The category law

I'm sorry if this sounds obvious but there seems to be some confusion about adding categories to pages. Sorry if I seem a little frustrated. I really am not angry at anyone.

A category is a collection of articles that have a subject in common. This is to organize the wiki, not just for the sake of raising one's edit count or earning achievements.

The Law

 * Pages usually only go in the most specific category of their topic, and not the parents of that category unless it is specified that that is okay. Pages are not added to categories that are not part of their subject.


 * Categories are only categorized if they are a more specific category of another. Only rarely will a category have multiple parent categories.


 * Categories should never be categorized in themselves or in a category that is categorized back to it.


 * Do not create new categories without permission. This is because 90% of the time the category is not supposed to exist.


 * Do not add categories to more than five pages in a row without permission. This is because 90% of the time it is not supposed to be added to those pages.


 * Please determine whether it is okay to add parent categories to a page by checking other similar pages. Most pages should do with only one or two user-added categories if they are about something that is somewhat specific. There is no need to add all the ones in that category's tree.

Examples
A page about a fish should be put in "Fish species" and not in "Fishing rods" (a sibling category) or "Fishing" (the parent category). Neither should it be put in "Activities" (the parent of the parent category).

There are exceptions however. A page about an NPC may be put in both "Shopkeeper toons" and "NPC toons" even though the first is a child category of the second one. This is only because it is very useful to have a full list of all the NPCs regardless of what they do. This also applies to pages about cogs who may be categorized by their class like "Sellbots" and in the parent category of "Cogs".

About categorizing categories
 * Category "Sellbots" is categorized in "Cogs".
 * Category "Cogs" is NOT categorized in "Sellbots".
 * Category "Sellbots" is NOT categorized in "Sellbots".