Help:Categorisation

Categories help in navigating generators by placing related generators together.

=Categorising a generator= A generator should have the following categories:
 * A topic, which tells what kinds of content the generator generates. See Category:Generators by topic. If there is no suitable topic, new one should be created, or the generator should be placed in Category:Generator (which should not be otherwise used). If there are several suitable topics, which are hierarchical, only the most specific should be used. If they are not hierarchical, all should be used.
 * A genre, which tells the genre of games or fiction the generator might be useful for. See Category:Generators by genre. Note, in particular, Category:Generic, for content for which genre is relevant, but which is useful in all or almost all genres. Genre category is not necessary for generators for which it is not relevant. If there are hierarchical genres that are relevant - for example Category:Cyberpunk and Category:Science Fiction - use only the most specific one. If there are non-hierarchical genres that are all relevant, use all of them.
 * A setting, if the generator is specific to some particular setting. See Category:Generators by setting.
 * A game, if the generator is specific to some game system. See Category:Generators by game.
 * Language, if the language of the generator is not some flavour of English. See Category:Generators by language.
 * There are also miscellaneous categories in Category:Generator. Use them as appropriate.

There also exist categories that intersect the classifications above - for example, Category:Fantasy Names is both a topic and genre category. These categories function as both topic and genre categories.

One should, in general, not use a category and a subcategory for single generator. For example a generator should not be in both Category:Weapons and Category:Item. Sometimes this is necessary. This happens most often with intersection categories - a generator of both post-apocalyptic and fantasy items would fit in Category:Item as topic category and Category:Post-Apocalypse and Category:Fantasy item as genre categories.

=Categorising a non-generator=
 * Templates should be placed in Category:Templates or suitable subcategory.
 * Pages that link several other pages are called portals and should be placed in Category:Portal, as well as suitable topic categories, which can be found in Category:Generators by topic.
 * There is also Category:Administration and Category:Users. Use as appropriate.

=Categorising a category= Categories should form a semilattice - every pair of categories should have a common category they are subcategories of, if one goes far enough upwards in the categorisation. There is a unique top category: Category:Contents.
 * Each generator category should always be a subcategory of at least one similar category or some category in Category:Generator. For example, each topic category should be a subcategory of another topic category or Category:Generators by topic.
 * Game categories can be subcategories of genre and setting categories.
 * Setting categories can be subcategories of genre categories.
 * Topic categories can be subcategories of genre or setting categories.

=Splitting large categories= If category becomes large, one should consider finding useful subcategories and placing generators within those instead of the large mother category. Creating mixed categories, such as topic-genre-categories, is one way to go. Another is to find subgenres or subtopics. Current large categories can be found in Special:MostLinkedCategories.