Categories (style guide)

From IFWiki

Informally, here are some suggestions/recommendations for categories. (This is a rough draft; I just want to jot down a few thoughts first.)

Naming of Categories

  • The name of a category should be plural, unless singular makes more sense. So "Tropes", not "Trope"; "Competitions", not "Competition", and so on. However, it would be silly to insist on plurals all the time. Categories like "2000" or "Inform" are just fine. This is a guideline, not a rule; common sense should overrule it.
  • Short names before long names.
  • IF-ness is assumed. It should be rare that we need to explicitly mention IF within a category name. So, prefer "Tropes" over "IF Tropes"; "Competitions" over "IF Competitions".
  • Avoid uppercase in category names if unneeded or uncustomary. Again, common sense can over rule this. So I'd prefer "Style guides" over "Style Guides". Note that ADRIFT and TADS are customarily used in all caps, so do capitalize those names.
    • A reasonable exception occurs when a single category might be sorted different ways in different categories. For example, use "Inform Tutorials" instead of "Inform tutorials", since in the Inform directory, you'd want this to sort under T for Tutorials.
  • What do we want to recommend with respect to non-ASCII characters in category names? Do we prefer Category:Clichés or Category:Cliches? My current thought is to go without the accents in category names, but I could be persuaded either way on this issue.
  • Editing existing categories to achieve consistency in the above suggestions isn't a high priority. Do try to follow them when creating new categories, though.

Hierarchy of Categories

  • There will be a new top level category called Basics. All other categories should be a subcategory of either Basics or some other category, or possibly both if it seems appropriate.