Commons:Empty categories

This page is a work in progress page, not an article or policy, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. Please offer suggestions on the talk page.

Some categories on this site are empty – they do not contain any files or pages. Very few of these categories are maintenance categories, all the other categories of that type that are not redirects or disambiguation pages can be speedily deleted per criteria C2.

Reports

• Categories with nonexisting categories (redcats) that are empty
  • Some of them should get fixed, nearly all of them should be deleted.
• Categories with only infobox meta categories that are empty
  • Many categories with only infobox categories are either disambiguation categories or have an image set in the Wikidata item. To the former (at least usually) {{Disambig}} should be added (which puts the page into a category). To the latter something special may often need to be done such as merging or renaming the category or adding media to the category.
• All empty categories on Commons without redirects and disambigs

Special types of empty categories

There are several special types of empty categories other than empty maintenance categories, redirects, and disambiguation pages:

Empty categories as part of a chronological series

For example categories in series with subcats like Category:1559 sculptures in Italy or Category:Charts showing data through 2024 may have had categories created automatically or semi-automatically. It has been argued such categories that are part of a natural series or set where all or almost all of the others are populated should not be deleted.

The category could still be deleted, especially if it's been created a sufficient time ago such as 6 months ago or earlier.

Empty categories about to soon be populated

Created for example shortly before some campaign event.

The category could still be deleted if it's been created a sufficient time ago such as 6 months ago or earlier.

Misuse for requesting media

People may create or not delete empty categories because these show for which subject media is missing. However, this is not a good method and there are are other ways to request media. For example, contributors could instead create a page that includes or lists which media is missing or file requests at pages like Commons:Audio and video requests.

Indexing

These category pages should not be indexed by search engines. According to TheDJ, using the NOINDEX magic word breaks the way google updates their indexes to a degree that makes if very difficult to change the page back to being indexed, and as such should not be used on pages that frequently change and where people have an expectation that the page should show up in indexes quickly once the no index command is removed. There would be a problem with the, as of October 2024, many empty categories if they are index.

Content of empty categories

Empty categories display this note:

There are no pages or files in this category.

This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more).

See also

• Relevant discussions: Page?/Noindex, Delete?, Proposal:Delete, …
• Template:How to delete empty categories
• Template:SDC2
• Template:Empty category