First, some background:
I'm on my second playthrough of Xenoblade Chronicles X, and I'm trying to gather information to best inform the customization of my Skell in earlier game chapters. I remember in my first playthrough that I eventually had two primary endgame Skells: An Ares 90 customized with Augments, and a level 60 Skell customized with Skell Superweapons (and Augments). I could switch Wii U accounts and load up my old save file to look it up, but I thought it would be less short-term hassle to read up on the various Skells, Skell equipment and Augments on the wiki. That led me to the Ares 90 article, which has basic information, but almost no wikilinks to the various equipment (I just now wikilinked four for the built-in weapons arts), when what I want is not just base data on the Skell, but its built-in frame Augments, number of Augment slots, a list (with wikilinks) of its built-in equipment, and articles explaining their individual stats, built-in augments and number of augment slots (I already know every Ares 90 built-in weapon has three slots).
And now, the topic at hand:
That led me to browse Category:Skells hoping to find more information, perhaps articles for other individual pieces of Ares 90 and other Skell equipment. Instead, I found...a mess. There are more category entries for images than there are for articles. At first, I thought, "Okay, you're an experienced wiki tech, you can help clean this up." So I started by creating Category:XCX Skell Screenshots and scanning for every File entry in both Category:XCX Screenshots and Category:Skells and put them in the child category. But then I realized there were even more images in Category:Skells, including concept art, scans from book pages, and even a screenshot of a Wii U Browser page with an image embedded on it. I'm sure these images have their place on the wiki—I won't question that. But there has to be a tidier way of organizing them, such that the wiki categories are easier to browse.
What the current state of the categories tells me is that navigation by human readers has never been that high a priority, which I can understand, given that it takes planning to set up an organized category tree. Categories not only in concept sort articles and files on a wiki, but are as much a resource for editors as they are for readers in helping them improve multiple articles at once with better wikilinks and data. It helps to think of a wiki as a library, and its categories, if well-maintained, as a constantly-updated clear map to the library's various topics, something like a card catalogue. Fandom wikis are searchable, but this functionality does not completely replacement the usefulness of categories.
I suggest a series of categories and subcategories broader than what there is now. Not just Category:Images, Category:XCX Screenshots, Category:Skells, etc. but additional categories on Skell frames, Skell equipment, Skell weapons, Skell superweapons, Skell armor, Skell images, Skell screenshots, just to name a few relating to Skells.
Whatever subcategory structure is adopted, it would help, where practical, for category entries (articles, files, subcategories, etc.) to be on the outermost branches of the category tree, which is what motivated me creating Category:XCX Skell Screenshots. If a parent category has many subcategories, it would be helpful for as many of its non-category entries, as is practical in each case, to be moved to subcategories, with the parent category containing only subcategories or individual non-category entries that are either of direct proportional importance to the parent category, or are stragglers that have not yet been moved to subcategories.
A subcategory can have more than one parent category, such as Category:XCX Skell Screenshots being in both Category:Skells and Category:XCX Screenshots. But since a lot of the Skell images aren't screenshots, there can be :Category:Skell Images which can be a subcategory of Category:Skells but a parent category of Category:XCX Skell Screenshots...if that makes sense.
Now, on a personal note, I admit that I'm not as engaged in this wiki as I am on others. But I still play one of these games from time to time. And sometimes I crave...quickly cross-referenceable data, stats, something I can use right now during gameplay. I know these things do not just materialize overnight, and that it takes human editors to set up these browsable data repositories, and sometimes those humans can (like me) be underengaged in maintaining it, or have only narrow interests that may come and go, or become burned out editors, or feel like such tasks are too great for them to take on, especially without help by other active editors. I get all this—I've edited wikis for most of my adult life, and have never once put food on my table because of it. So I don't quite know how to suggest pooling volunteer editors as a resource to getting this done, as I'm sure the more active editors on this wiki have been trying to figure out precisely those kinds of things for years. But if ultimately nothing else comes of this post, then I hope someone at least takes note of my complaint and suggestions.