Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Categorization

This project endeavors to categorize films in a simple logical manner so that anyone is able to effectively browse the large number of films here on Wikipedia. This means that clear categorization guidelines must be established. With these guidelines in place, this department can then categorize all the films in a systematic manner.

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Start a film specific section on Categories, lists, and series boxes.
• Check for current discussions in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion and offer your vote and comments. If any issue arises that contradicts or sets in question the guidelines of this department, please bring it up for discussion here.

At the moment, for the sake of simplicity this section will solely deal with the categorization of individual films' articles. In other words, Category:Films, not Category:Film. The latter category is the root category of all film-related articles, and is in the process of being evaluated for possible restructuring.

The category scheme outlined below originates in the sub-root category—Category:Films—and can be thought of as a tree structure that intersects at several points. A guide to the top-level sub-categories of Category:Films is presented below; for brevity, only a selection of the broadest categories are shown.

Category:Films

Category:Film series

Category:Film stubs

Category:Films by country

Category:Films by genre

Category:Films by language

Category:Films by studio

Category:Films by year

Category:Lists of films

Category:Lists of films by award

Category:Upcoming films

If a film has few or no categories add [[Category:Uncategorised films]] at the bottom of the article. Then add {{Uncategorized}} or {{Improve categories}} at the top of the article page to alert other editors.

In general, articles and categories should be placed in the most specific applicable categories, and should not be placed directly in a "parent" category if they are already present in one of its sub-categories. For example, if an article is placed in Category:Comedy horror films, there is no need to place it in Category:Comedy films or Category:Horror films.

Note, however, that this applies only to direct placement into a "parent" category; it is normal for a category to have multiple indirect paths up to some other category higher in the tree. For example, Category:American documentary films is both a sub-category of Category:American films and a sub-category of Category:Documentary films; thus, there are two distinct paths from Category:American documentary films up to Category:Films. This is especially common when dealing with intersection categories.

See § General categorization for exceptions.

One important aspect of the "most specific" principle is that if every article in a category belongs to another category, it is sufficient to nest the categories directly, rather than double-categorizing each individual article. For example, A Nightmare on Elm Street does not need to be added to Category:Film series directly because Category:A Nightmare on Elm Street is already a sub-category of it.

In many cases, articles can be categorized through several parallel classification schemes, associating them with the related countries, languages, years, and other topics. There are two general ways of applying multiple categories from these classification schemes to a particular article. The simplest, which can be sufficient for unusual combinations or small categories, is to apply each category separately. As with the aforementioned example, an American documentary film could be placed in both Category:American films and Category:Documentary films. However, this system is unwieldy as category sizes increase; thus, common combinations of multiple categories can be made explicit by creating an "intersection" sub-category for them; in this case, Category:American documentary films.

The intersection category can potentially combine an arbitrary number of elements from the overall category structure, but categories that combine two or three are more common. It is recommended, however, to follow existing combinations. For example, Year-Country films categories should not be created, unless the project decides it is wise to do so. This is not so imperative when creating an isolated category somewhere down the line, but it certainly is when this action could open the way for a big number of resulting intersections.

Following a discussion in June 2016, a consensus was reached not to create a category structure for the combination of Year-Genre, with the exception of horror films. Possible future creation of categories by year and genre should be discussed with the Film Project before creating them. In July 2017, a consensus was also reached not to create a category structure for the combination of Country-Year.

Note that the simpler system can still be used in conjunction with intersection categories to avoid the proliferation of extremely small and narrow sub-categories. For example, it may be better to place an article in both Category:Armenian films and Category:Documentary films than to create an additional Category:Armenian documentary films. A similar approach should be taken if there is no reasonable way to name a potential intersection category.

All films can and should be categorized on at least the following criteria:

• by year – this should be the first year of its first verifiable release (including film festival screenings). For upcoming films yet to be released, the category should be included as long as it is supported by a reliable source in the article.
• by country – this may be somewhat contentious for international co-productions
• by language – all silent films should be categorized under Category:Silent films, regardless of the language of their creators. In all other films, the main language only should be given, except for rare cases when the film is clearly bilingual or multilingual.
• by studio – this is exclusively for the studio(s) that produced the film.

It has been decided by long standing consensus, that these four categories of films (Category:YYYY films, Category:XXXX films, Category:XXXX-language films, Category:XXXX studio films) are non-diffusing parent categories. The most important reasons given for this have been: their use in incategory searching, their use in the related changes function, and in relation to the category intersection proposal.

Some categorization criteria commonly used may be less easily verified, such as Category:Films by genre, where a given film may not necessarily occupy a clear genre or disagreement may exist on whether or not certain genres fit the film. As always, consensus should be canvassed.

Please keep in mind that categories assigned to articles by templates are NOT visible to the "incategory" search term. For this search feature to find all articles belonging to a certain category, the category has to be inserted manually at the bottom of these articles, along with the other assigned categories. This limitation of the search feature is explained in detail here: WP:TEMPLATECAT.

This attempt of grouping categories is based on the existing logic of categorizing. Please, feel free to expand it or correct it. If in doubt, please post on the discussion page.