User blog:Purplatypus/Revising the Category System

As the title suggests, I'm working on making serious edits to our categories in an attempt to make them better-defined and more useful to users. Below are my ideas about what to edit. I'll leave this up for several days before I start making any of the edits to give other scribes a chance to look over this and comment. Please let me know if you see a problem with any of this, have suggestions for better ways to deal with things, etc.

However, I would like to ask that others do not make category edits while I'm working on this. There are a couple reasons for this: Thanks!
 * I'm trying to use this project to gain my next contributor tier, so I'd like to be able to say that I did it on my own :)
 * This seems like a case where multiple people working on a thing and having slightly different ideas about how it should turn out could end up being counterproductive, making it harder to keep track of what's already been done, etc.

Anyway, here are the changes I'd like to make:

Merge
To be clear, when I say "merge category X into category Y," I mean "delete category X, while making sure all pages in X end up in category Y if appropriate." Essentially, I'm trying to avoid having multiple similar categories when we could just have one.
 * Merge Adapting Habitica, Adapting HabitRPG, Guides, Habits, Scenarios, and Tips and Tricks into Methodologies. These categories are all either too small (like the Adapting ones) or too vague to be helpful, and it's often not clear which one a page fits best in, so I want to combine them all into just one, and Methodologies feels like the best to me.
 * Merge Ambassadors, Artisans, Audio, Bards, Blacksmiths, Habitica Trello Boards, Help:Technical, Scribes, and Translation into Contributing. These are all too small to justify existing on their own, especially given that they should be linked to from the relevant Guidance pages (I'll make sure they are).
 * Merge Bosses into Boss Quests. (Nearly identical, no need to have both)
 * Merge Rewards and Goals into Incentives
 * Merge Pets, Mounts, and Eggs into a new category, Pets and Mounts (again, these categories are similar enough that there's no need to have them separate)

Delete
These are categories that I don't think are useful/necessary enough to keep, usually because they're too small or too vague to be helpful, or because all the pages in it are in another category or linked to from some central page anyway. As Alys has pointed out, having fewer categories will make it easier for users to find ones that are useful to them (and for scribes to keep the ones we have up-to-date).

Deleting involves removing the category from all pages it's on, and deleting the category page if there is one.
 * Advanced (vague)
 * Android (small)
 * Basics (vague, covered well enough by Newbies and Mechanics)
 * Bosses with Rage (small)
 * Credits (not sure why someone would need this? If anything, I think it would be more helpful to have a Credits Needed category)
 * Customization (vague)
 * Drops (small and covered by page of same name)
 * Food (small)
 * Future Features (small and covered by SpeculativeContent)
 * Gameplay (vague)
 * Habitica Places (already marked for deletion; covered by Places in Habitica page)
 * Interfaces (small and vague)
 * Inventory (covered by Inventory page and Equipment category)
 * Legendary (small and everything is linked from Legendary Equipment page)
 * Mobile (small)
 * Options (everything linked from Toolbar page)
 * Party (small)
 * Redirects (redirects are listed automatically on Special:Listredirects)
 * Settings (covered by page of the same name)
 * Setup Tips (covered by Newbies)
 * Spanish (small)
 * Subscription (small, covered by Subscription page)
 * Tasks (vague, and the most relevant pages are very easy to find)
 * Toolbar (covered by page of the same name)
 * Websites (websites included here serve diverse purposes and I'm not sure when it would be useful for someone to see a list of all of them)
 * World Boss (small)
 * Each of the specific class categories--Healer, Mage, Rogue, Warrior (everything should be available from class page)
 * Each of the specific Grand Gala categories--Winter Wonderland, Spring Fling, Summer Splash, Fall Festival (everything should be available from the relevant page)

Keep
These are categories that I think are worth keeping in more or less their current form. This is not to say that they're perfect, though--I'll still review each one carefully to make sure it includes everything it should, and nothing it shouldn't. :) In some cases I happened to already notice pages that should be added or removed, in which case I've mentioned them here, but that's certainly not a complete list of the changes that I will make.
 * Apps
 * Avatar
 * Challenges
 * Class System
 * Collection Quests
 * Community
 * Content
 * Equipment
 * Extensions
 * Fun (I realize this is a small category, but I think it's worth keeping because, well, it's fun, and there's no other easy way for people to come across some of the pages)
 * Grand Galas (add Equipment from Past Events)
 * Guilds (add Guilds, Guilds Guide)
 * Health (add Health Points)
 * Incentives (add The Perfect Day)
 * Mechanics
 * Newbies
 * News (remove Notifications)
 * Parties (add Party)
 * Pet Quests
 * Profile
 * Quests
 * Sample Lists
 * Skills
 * Social
 * Special Event Items
 * Stats
 * Unlockable Features (add Skills)
 * World Events

Behind The Scenes Categories
The sections above only list the categories related to the content of articles. These are the ones related to the more behind-the-scenes aspects of the wiki. The first few are ones that I understand and have opinions about:

Keep

 * Candidates for deletion
 * SuggestedChanges (need to review each page and remove any that do not have changes suggested in their talk pages that still need to be made)
 * Underconstruction

Delete

 * Article stubs (This is being used almost exclusively for pages about software or future features, neither of which are in need of expansion. Basically, our scribe team is too on top of things to leave anything as a true stub long enough for this category to be necessary :) When we do have stubs, they can be covered by the Underconstruction category instead.)

?
These are categories that are less relevant to the type of editing I normally do, meaning I don't feel particularly qualified to judge whether or not they should be kept (And I think some are automatically-generated...). I think at least most of them exist for a good reason, and I'm inclined to leave them all as they are unless someone (probably an admin) says otherwise.
 * Article management templates
 * Blog posts
 * Bug
 * Category templates
 * CC-BY-NC-SA Files‏
 * CC-BY-SA Files‏‎
 * Disambiguations
 * Fair Use Files
 * Files
 * Forums
 * General wiki templates
 * Habitica Templates
 * Hidden Categories
 * Homepage Templates
 * Images wiki templates
 * Images
 * Everything starting with Images-
 * Infobox templates
 * LGPL Files
 * Organization
 * Other Free Files
 * Pages with broken file links
 * Policy
 * Public Domain Files
 * References Source Code
 * Self-Made Files
 * Site administration
 * Site maintenance
 * SpeculativeContent
 * Spoiler
 * Template Tables
 * Template Documentation
 * Templates
 * The ____ (various forum categories)
 * Top 10 Lists
 * Videos

Index of Categories
Once I'm done making the edits, I'd like to make a new page, similar to Index, called something like Category Index or Index of Categories (leaning toward the latter so it would be next to Index alphabetically).

This would differ from Special:Categories in that it would only include content categories that would be helpful for typical users--they could use this list to look for what they want without having to wade through the more behind-the-scenes categories listed in the previous section.

This should make the category system more helpful and user-friendly. I also hope that having an official-looking list of categories will make newer editors less likely to create new categories without thinking carefully about how necessary they are, and thus help keep our list of categories smallish and under control :)