This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcut WP:IRE-CATS

1) For every category of things Foo in the Republic of Ireland, one should create an associated parent category Foo in Ireland, and if there are relevant articles, a sister category Foo in Northern Ireland.

In graphical terms, for (almost) every major category, it should look more or less like this:

               [Foo by Country]  [Foo in Europe]
               _________|_____________|____________________
               |                                          |
               |                                          |
               |        [Foo in Ireland]      [Foo in the United Kingdom]
               |           |         |                    |
  [Foo in the Republic of Ireland]  [Foo in Northern Ireland]

Cases where the above does not apply:

• categories that will never have a whole-island scope (for example, something like Category:Gaeltacht places in County Galway)
• special categories that are always All-island in scope, like certain sports - in which case, there is no point creating the RoI/NI split below.
• small categories or categories on cultural or historical issues, where RoI and NI articles can simply be mixed

An examples, to illustrate the above:

• Category:Politics of the Republic of Ireland in Category:Politics of Ireland, Category:Politics by country and Category:Politics of Europe by country
• Category:Politics of Northern Ireland in Category:Politics of Ireland and Category:Politics of the United Kingdom by country

Blank sort keys should be used, so that for Foo in Ireland, Foo in the republic of Ireland and Foo in Northern Ireland show up as the first categories. See Category:Politics of Ireland for an example.

2) If a category contains only things which are in RoI, it should not be called 'Foo of Ireland' (a sub-cat called Foo of the Republic of Ireland should be created instead.)

Examples:

• Category:Abortion in Ireland - a sub-cat should be created for RoI, and some articles moved underneath, like the Abortion in the Republic of Ireland
• Category:Euroscepticism in Ireland - a subcat should be created for RoI, since most of the articles are about RoI

3) Pages should always be diffused into the most specific category. For example, a currently-functioning hotel should always be placed either in Category:Hotels in the Republic of Ireland or Category:Hotels in Northern Ireland, and Category:Hotels in Ireland should be empty, or almost so.

4) The categories titled Category:Foo of Ireland are usually reserved for articles that are island-wide in scope, cover organizations/entities/etc that are All-Ireland/32 county/etc, or if the category is historical in nature.

5) The special category Category:All-Ireland organisations can be used for organizations that have an island-wide scope.

6) Northern Ireland should not appear as a sub-category of Republic of Ireland.

7) Items in the Republic of Ireland should not appear as a sub-category of the United Kingdom.

8) In general, the Foo in Ireland categories should only be placed in the category for the more general subject in Ireland, not in the Foo by country and Foo in Europe trees; instead, Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom should be categorized under Foo by country and Foo in Europe, for consistency. However, there may be some exceptions, where the most relevant category is Ireland, such as Category:Religion in Ireland.

9) Due to the special history and politics of Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland categories should always be dual-parented by both British and Irish parent categories. Thus, Foo in Northern Ireland categories should be placed in both Foo in the United Kingdom/British foo and Foo in Ireland/Irish foo accordingly.