Blooncyclopedia:Category guidelines

Categories on Blooncyclopedia are used to organize articles and files for quick navigation and to make it easier for editors to find material (e.g. images and audio). Categories are expected to be subdivided into subcategories to make content easier to find without being so granular as to make it too complex.

Category structure

• If an article is about the subject of the category, then it should be listed in the category tree first with an asterisk (*). For example, Bloons TD 6 is categorized under Category:Bloons TD 6 with [[Category:Bloons TD 6|*]] and List of upgrades in BTD6 is categorized under Category:Upgrades in BTD6 with [[Category:Upgrades in BTD6|*]].
• Categories under an asterisk should be listed first, then game-specific categories, then any other categories. This is for consistency with infoboxes that automatically insert game-specific categories.
• Category pages should contain a brief summary of what the category means. Even if the category seems self-explanatory from the name, it should at least spell out what the abbreviation stands for.

Titles

• Category titles follow the same rules as article titles, except they should always be plural if possible and not start with "list of".
• Categories for games should be spelled out in full (e.g. Category:Bloons TD 6). Sub-categories of those games should use abbreviations (e.g. Category:Upgrades in BTD6).
• Categories for features within games should be phrased as "[subjects] in [game]" (e.g. Category:Upgrades in BTD6). Categories for aspects of the game, but not necessarily in the game, should be phrased as "[game] [subjects]" (e.g. Category:BTD6 images).
• A category should not be added to an article if it belongs to a subcategory of it. Bloons Card Storm should not belong to both Category:Windows games and Category:Games, for example, because Category:Windows games is already a subcategory of Category:Games.

Size and scope

• In general, categories shouldn't be so small that it becomes too difficult to navigate between subcategories, but not so large it becomes too difficult to search through. There are limits to how small a category can be, but there is no upper limit, so use common sense when deciding which categories should be split into subcategories.
  • Categories for articles should generally not contain fewer than five articles and subcategories. Categories with three or four items are okay if the category's name is an official and distinct term that does not have its own article (e.g. Category:Wizard Powers), but anything smaller than that is unnecessary.
  • Categories for files should generally not contain fewer than 20 files unless all the files in that category would otherwise belong to the same subcategories (e.g. Category:BTD6 Spellbook icons, which is a subcategory of Category:BTD6 sprites and Category:Corvus images so that all the images don't have to belong to both BTD6 sprites and Corvus images individually). The absolute bare minimum size for a file category is ten files, which does not count subcategories or files in subcategories.