Help:Add categories to article
Contents
Categories
Categories can be added to every page (article, template, form, etc). Categories help with navigation and sorting an article into thematic areas.
Ideally, categories are applied as follows:
- Categories are as concise as possible, and labelled appropiately and unambiguously.
- Categories contain only a few words, keywords.
- Every article is assigned as few categories as possible (and as many as necessary and relevant).
- Every article, every page receives normally at least one category (with exceptions).
- Main categories and subcategories are not used simultaneously > only the subcategory is necessary.
- Categories are generally expressed in singular, only categories, that hold only other (sub-)categories, are expressed in plural.
Add a page to a category
The categories are placed at the very end of the source code.
Syntax:
[[Category:Category name]]
Example:
[[Category:Help]]
[[Category:Festival]]
- Technically, you can add categories everwhere in the source code, but the position right at the end of the code (just before the language versions) is established, as the categories also will show at this position in the text and are much easier to find.
- For clarity more than one category are written one below the other.
Create the category page
The category still appears in red font, if the category page itself hasn't been created yet (however, the classification into the category already works).
In addition to the automatic list, notes and references can appear on a category page:
- Notes about the utilization of the category
- Notes and links to forms, site maps, portals, articles
Link to a category in an article
It is possible to link to a category within an article/a page. To prevent this page from being sorted into the category, it is necessary to add a colon : to the code:
[[:Category:Help|Help category]].
This will show as a link to the page of the category, instead of sorting the page into the category: Help category
Subcategories and main categories
If there are main categories to a given category (i.e. super-categories and sub-categories), it should always be the lowest level of the category hierarchy that will be attached to the article (the most sub-category possible).
Questions & answers
I cannot see a category in the source code, but the page is still sorted into it.
Probably, a template is used in the page. Most of the templates sort the pages, where the template is used, automatically into a category. This is a good feature!
When a page has been created via a form, it is also put into a certain category.
Example: The TangoAmadeus festival has been created via the festival form and got sorted into the category "festival" without any hints in the source code on the page. However, in the source code of the underlying Template:Infobox Festival that is used on this page, one can see, that the category is used there.
The future: Categories vs. Semantic Wiki
In TangoWiki Semantic MediaWiki is installed. As a result TangoWiki is geared up for semantic browsing. The semantic attributes are a more efficient extension of the normal Wiki categories. All categories and templates are edited keeping this in view. The majority of the categories has already been substituted by semantic attributes and corresponding queries.
Unlike Wikipedia, where many pages are sorted into many different categories, using Semantic MediaWiki and Semantic Forms (forms and templates to create pages), pages get sorted into one ore more categories automatically, though one category is usually sufficient, as categories became superseded by semantic attributes.
