Thread:Mediawatcher/@comment-3581997-20140826160532

I thought it best to answer your questions on your wall rather than admin Garfield's. We are not using deleted categories, users continue to add the tags (or at-least I have not seen any of my fellow admins adding deleted category tags), we ban those we find violating policy by re-adding them, but in order to remove the categories from popping up the tags must be removed from all articles, simply clicking "delete" does not remove it, the tag must be pulled from each page it occupies and then deleted in order to be obliterated. As you have noticed of course we are working on a major back log of these sort of categories. Most categories have a couple hundred pages with the tag added, between redundant categories, meaningless aesthetics and simple invalid ones we are constantly playing clean-up and I am sorry for the state things are in.

Know that Villains wiki was once in such a state too. And serious contributors helped clean said articles out of the categories. If you want things clean simply find a category that is marked for deletion, visit each article with it as a tag, and remove the category tag.

I am prioritizing clearing out the meaningless aesthetic categories, myself, Ex. Pink Heroes, Heroes who Wear Hats. If you see a category that you feel should be slashed and burned even quicker than say Purple Heroes, either routinely drop the titles of such categories on my wall or clear them out yourself to speed things along. Remember even if you can't delete a category yourself you can remove the tags. And again, I am aware of how messy some of these are, that contributors care so little for their own work is depressing.

If you don't want to go crazy, either focus just on your own articles and go to town on anyone who adds some meaningless tag to it, or do what I did on Villains, patroll for the garbage categories whenever you find them. 