Help:Categories

A category is a software feature of MediaWiki, a special page which is intended to group related pages and media. In practice, it implies that you'll associate a single subject with a given category. The category name would be enough to guess the subject, but some extra text can be useful to precisely define it.

Quick guide

1. How to find the appropriate categories
   • Find categories with the search engine (see #Categorization tips)
   • or check how similar images are categorized (some may not be categorized though)
   • Starting from these categories, check their parent or sub-categories to find an appropriate category. Avoid picking too general categories.
2. Add the categories to the file/image
   • Select them on the upload form
   • or: add them manually by adding, e.g. [[Category:Foobar]] to the file description page (see #Categorizing_pages)

How to use categories

You should always put your uploads into categories and/or gallery pages according to topic, so your contributions can be found and used by others.

Category names

Category names should generally be in English.

Categorizing pages

To add a page (be it a real article, an image or a category page) to a category, add the following code to the end of the page.

[[Category:Category Name]]

For information on how to find good categories for your uploads and galleries, read the section Find an appropriate category below.

Creating a new category

To create a new category:

1. Do a thorough search, to be sure there isn't an existing category that will serve the purpose.
2. Find pages or images which should be put in the new category. Edit this page, and at the end insert the new category reference. e.g. [[Category:Title]]. Save the edited page. The new category appears as a red link at the bottom of the page.
3. Click on that red link. The new, empty, category page appears for editing. You can now edit the category like any other wiki page.

A category page should contain the following information (in order of importance):

• Category-links that put it into one or more parent categories. At the bottom of the new page, insert lines of the form [[Category:Relevant categories]].
• A short description text that explains what should be in the category, if the title is not clear or unambiguous enough on its own.
• If the category should be sorted according to a different string than the category title, add a {{DEFAULTSORT:}}. For instance, the title of a category about a person would not be the right sort string. For such categories, insert after the interwiki links a line like {{DEFAULTSORT:Lastname, firstname}} with the correct sort string.

Related content

• Special:Categories lists all categories.
• Category:Images lists all image categories.