Any questions about history, geography, science, etc., as well as Vikidia itself and how it works? Ask The Scholar! Help:Categories
Categories are used to organize all pages on Vikidia. Initially, this is not done automatically; you must add one or more "tags" to the pages (usually at the bottom). Once this category tag is added, the page title—and even a thumbnail image in the case of image pages—automatically appears on the category page specified in the tag.
Why categories?[change source]
Categories make it easy to group articles that cover related topics. For example, cat and leopard are both felines, and are therefore both in the Category:Felines. This makes it easier to find them later and to see all the articles that exist on a topic related to the one you are reading or writing about.
Categories are themselves categorized, meaning there are more general categories found at the bottom of the page. Subcategories—more specific categories—are typically found at the top of the page. For example, at the bottom of the Category:Mammals page, there is a link to Category:Vertebrates at the bottom of the page, and if you go to that page, you'll find the Mammal category (as well as Category:Birds and other animal classes). To do this, simply add the Category:Animals tag to the Category:Mammals page: it is the same process as for articles.
To prevent a category from having too many articles and to make it easier to browse, each page should be assigned to the most specific category available. That category, in turn, should be placed within a broader category, and so on... all the way up to a category called Category:Main. It is possible—and recommended—to select multiple categories for a single article, since it often relates to several topics.
There are thus several types of categories:
- The main category: Category:Main
- Root thematic categories: for example, Category:History
- Intermediate categories: for example, Category:Middle Ages
- Even more specific categories, such as Category:Medieval Scandinavia
Image categories[change source]
Images stored on Vikidia must be properly categorized, just like articles.
Article to read: Help:Categorizing imagesHow?[change source]
To add a category to a page, simply enter the following on the page:
[[Category:Category name]]
To create a link to a category, enter:
[[:Category:Category name]]
Sometimes, you will find links in the following format:
[[Category:Category name|text]]
This notation allows you to change the article's alphabetical placement on the category page. For example, in Category:Vikidia help, all pages (that are not named “articles”) begin with the word “Help” and are therefore classified under the letter A by default. To avoid this, when placing Category:Vikidia help in the article text, add the vertical bar | followed by a phrase: this is the phrase that will appear on the category page, not the article's name.
The same applies to the names of famous people. In fact, articles about them are often titled "first_name_last_name," but people tend to search by last name rather than first name! So, when you add a category to an article, pay attention to its placement in the alphabetical list. The code is written as follows:
[[Category:Category name|Last name, First name]]
As a general rule, "Last name, First name" is always the way to enter an author's name in a bibliography, where the data will be processed and compiled by a computer program.
Sort key[change source]
This tool is used to automatically sort categories. It is added after the portal and before the categories at the bottom of the page using {{DEFAULTSORT:}}, which means "sort key." It allows all categories that are and will be on the article to be arranged in the correct order. The sorting information is therefore marked only once instead of five times if there are five categories. Example
{{DEFAULTSORT:Last name, first name}}
[[Category:Category name 1]]
[[Category:Category name 2]]...It is particularly useful to use this sort key for all articles with accents on the first letter (É, È, Ê, Î, Â...). In fact, without a sort key, these end up at the end of the alphabet after Z! With the sort key
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ecole}} école appears with the Es and not after the Zs.
It is even recommended to write words without accents, in the clédetri, and without special characters (æ, œ...). Thus, "oe" should be written as "œ".
Encyclopedia Category Tree[change source]
Unused categories[change source]
There is a special page that lists all categories that do not contain any pages. These are referred to as unused categories. They are generally deleted. Here, on the right, is what that special page looks like.
There are other special pages for categories:
- Special:Categories, all used categories
- Special:WantedCategories, category names for which placeholders have been added to articles but have not been created
- Special:MostLinkedCategories
- Special:UncategorizedCategories
- Special:UncategorizedPages
- Special:UncategorizedFiles
- Special:UncategorizedTemplates
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