Help:Categories

Help topics

What is a category?[edit]

A category groups similar pages together and displays them in a hierarchical list on the category page. They are grouped alphabetically and can contain an unlimited amount of sub-categories. Site-related articles use them a lot; for example, this article is in the Category:Help. Categories are displayed at the bottom of the page. Occasionally, certain templates may automatically put an article in a particular category.

Creating a category[edit]

Categories can be created just like any other page on the wiki. After you have determined an appropriate name for a category, you can go to the un-created category page (e.g. "Category:New category name"), and create the category by placing content into the edit box and clicking the "Save page" button. Category pages should have a short description of what the category contains and should also be placed in any relevant parent categories.

Note that unnecessary or duplicate categories will be deleted.

Adding an article to a category[edit]

To add an article to a category, place [[Category:Category name]] at the bottom of the page, replacing 'Category name' with the name of the category. Remember that there is no space after the colon :. It's also possible to create subcategories by using the same Wiki markup to place the category page in a parent category. If you just want to provide a link to a category without categorizing the page itself, add a colon before "Category". (e.g. [[:Category:Help]])

Registered users can also use HotCat to quickly and easily manage categories.

Removing an article from a category[edit]

To remove a category, simply delete the [[Category:...]] wikicode from the page wherever it appears (usually at the bottom). If there are no categories explicitly declared in wikitext, it's possible the page is being categorized via a template. When editing the page check the list below the text editor Templates used on this page:. You can click on each template to see whether it includes any [[Category:...]] wikitext. If it's not mentioned in the template's documentation you may have to edit it to look at its source code.

Once you've identified the template that is associated with the category you want to remove, delete the template call from the page you are working on. If you'd like to keep the template on the page, but remove the categorization functionality, the template would need to be edited to allow for manual exclusion on specific pages.

Categorization guidelines[edit]

All pages, images, and templates should be categorized appropriately (one category minimum, with no maxiumum). Doing so helps readers find pages with similar information, and are also useful when keeping track of large amounts of similar pages (such as villagers).