Categories are not the only way to provide readers with an organized approach that ties a group of articles together. Lists and navigation templates (such as series boxes) both can do the same thing. For example, Figure 17-10 is a list that essentially does the same thing as the category shown in Figure 17-1 (page 324).
Figure 17-10. If this list of economists looks familiar, it’s because it’s also Figure 14-6 (page 259), and because Figure 18-1 earlier in this chapter, showing the category page Economists, has almost the same set of links in it. Lists and categories can overlap considerably, but each has strengths and weaknesses.
You’ve probably seen the third option—navigation templates—but you may not be familiar with the label. Figure 17-11 shows a series box for winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
Figure 17-11. Shown is the series box titled Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics: List of Laureates. This series box appears in an article when the template {{Nobel Prize in Economics}} is added to the article’s wikitext. Series boxes are appropriate for relatively short lists (the one shown has about sixty links). Series boxes are also appropriate only when membership in a list is very clear. Prominent British politicians, for example, would not be good for a series box, since “prominence” is on a continuum. Even if everyone agreed on relative prominence, the cut-off point for being in or not in the series box is still arbitrary.
The guideline Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates (shortcut: WP:CLN) discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each of these three ways of providing navigation among articles. It also notes that “When developers of these redundant systems compete against each other in a destructive manner, such as by nominating the work of their competitors to be deleted simply because they overlap, they are doing Wikipedia a disservice.” In short, there’s room on Wikipedia for editors to offer readers multiple ways to get around; no single approach is as good as a mix of all three; and editors who believe their approach is superior should direct their efforts at improving what they favor, to offer something even better to readers, rather than trying to convince other editors that their approach is inferior.
Note
Search engines do notice category pages. In Google, for example, the page Category:Economists was the fourth result of a search on “economists” (with results limited to pages on the English Wikipedia). The article List of Economists was the second result. (Economist was first, Economics was third).
If categorizing articles intrigues you, one place to start is the page Category:Underpopulated categories, a category for categories that contain at least one page, and where an editor felt that more pages were needed. Another place is Category:Category needs checking.
Also consider joining WikiProject Categories (shortcut: WP:CATP). And more editors are always welcome at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (shortcut: WP:CFD).