Commons:Categories requiring diffusion
The main method of browsing Wikimedia Commons (as opposed to searching) is via the category system. Often, categorisation is quite broad so the ability to browse Wikimedia Commons effectively is limited as the categories are incomplete or cluttered. This page has been developed to help maintain more important categories and for information on how files are best diffused from categories into a or multiple subcategories. The tool cat-a-lot is very helpful for moving many files at once into fitting subcategories.
- More information is below these tables.
Maintenance list
These tables allow editors to quickly see which categories contain files and allows comparison to how many the category should have. The "Current" column is dynamically generated and the "Suggested" column is an indication of the number that should be present.
The purge button to the right should be used to get the latest data.
Top levels
| Category | Current | Suggested | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category:CommonsRoot | 14 | 0 | Top level |
| Category:Topics | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:Categories | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:Commons | 2 | 0 | |
| Category:Gallery pages | 1 | 0 | |
| Category:Audio files | 16,167 | 0 | |
| Category:Images | 10 | 0 | |
| Category:Videos | 806 | 0 | |
| Category:Animations | 54 | 0 | |
| Category:Media types | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:Media by source | 0 | 0 |
Topics/Subject/Concepts
| Category | Current | Suggested | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category:Art | 3,427 | 0 | |
| Category:Activities | 1 | 0 | |
| Category:Culture | 437 | 0 | |
| Category:History | 286 | 0 | |
| Category:Objects | 37 | 0 | |
| Category:People | 578 | 0 | |
| Category:Places | 8 | 0 | |
| Category:Science | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:Society | 1 | 0 | |
| Category:Technology | 390 | 0 |
Continents
It is unlikely to find an file in a continent category that cannot be subcategorised.
| Category | Current | Suggested | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category:Africa | 2 | 0 | |
| Category:Asia | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:Europe | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:North America | 1 | 0 | |
| Category:Oceania | 0 | 0 | |
| Category:South America | 1 | 0 | |
Countries
It is unlikely to find a file in a country category that cannot be subcategorised.
Centuries
- (These are probably the more important ones)
|
Years
- (These are probably the more important ones)
|
Notes
The templates {{Categorise}} and {{CatDiffuse}} are used on some of the categories that need maintenance. They appear to be ignored by editors, including uploaders, and are unnecessary clutter for the viewers of Wikimedia Commons.
The tables above are for some of the more important categories. {{MetaCat}} and {{CatCat}} are used on categories which should only contain subcategories. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Metacat can be used to find them.
If you do not know what would be a more appropriate category use {{Check categories}} to mark it for other editors to resolve.
As of November 2022 Category:Categories requiring permanent diffusion to zero has 12,733 entries.
Often, files do not belong into just one subcategory but into multiple subcategories.
See also
- Commons:Categories - Wikimedia Commons policy
- Commons:Categories for discussion/2010/12/Category:Categories requiring permanent diffusion
- Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/01/Category:Categories requiring diffusion
- Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Categorise
- User:Alaexis/Diffusor, a tool helping with diffusion via category suggestions
