TenthFleet:Category system

Editor's Handbook

A guided path — read the sections in order

Start here

1. Contributor's guide
2. Introduction
3. Be bold
4. Editing basics

Style & layout

5. Manual of Style
6. Guide to layout
7. Naming conventions
8. Namespaces
9. Citing sources

Building content

10. Peerage page
11. Award page
12. Ship page
13. Echelon page
14. Documenting an order
15. Posting news

Templates

16. Template guide

Deep dives

17. Styling & theme
18. Infoboxes
19. Navboxes
20. Dynamic lists (DPL)
21. Supersession
22. Categories

This page explains how categories work and how to give a new one a proper description. Categories are the wiki's filing system: they group related pages so readers can browse them.

Adding a page to a category

Put a category tag at the very foot of the page:

[[Category:Ships]]

The page then shows up in that category, and a link to the category appears at the bottom of the page. You can add several.

Giving a category a description

A category with pages in it but no description page shows as a red link. Every category should have a short description so readers know what belongs in it. To add one:

1. Click the red category link, or search for Category:Yourname.
2. Write one clear sentence saying what the category holds.
3. Add a parent category so it nests in the tree, for example a fleet-orders category sits inside [[Category:Orders]].

A finished category page looks like this:

Orders and directives issued by the Second Fleet of {{trmn}}.

[[Category:Orders]]

Find the ones that need descriptions
The page Special:WantedCategories lists every category that is in use but has no description page. It is the to-do list for tidying the category tree.

Hidden maintenance categories

Some categories are added automatically by the software to track problems, such as "Pages with broken file links". These are maintenance categories. Mark them hidden by putting __HIDDENCAT__ at the top of the category page, which keeps them off the category bar at the foot of articles while still letting maintainers find them.

Watch for typos
A misspelled category tag creates a brand-new empty category. If you see two categories that differ by one letter, one is almost certainly a typo. Fix the tag on the source page rather than describing the wrong spelling.