Help:Categories

Categories are a convenient way to organize pages and files into groups. They can be used to group similar or related pages and files into sets, simplifying searching and maintenance. For example, lists of species within genera are maintained using categories (see Formica species). Ideally every page and file will belong to at least a few categories and some pages will belong to many.

Categories are a powerful way to organise information and are especially useful as the size and complexity of Antwiki increases.

Introduction to Categories

You can categorize a page or file by adding one or more Category tags to the content text. These tags create links at the bottom of the page that take you to a list of all pages in that category. This makes it easy to find and browse related articles and associated file sets. These category pages are automatically created and updated as new pages are added to, or removed from, the category.

To help organise category pages, category pages themselves can be added to categories. When this is done category pages form a hierarchy with a top-most category page (in Antwiki, this is Category:Antwiki) which contains links to subcategories belonging to this category. Theoretically this allow browsing of the entire Antwiki site simply by clicking from page to page without having to do a search (the theory is broken with pages are created that do not belong to categories).

For a complete list of all categories which have at least one page, see Special:Categories. For a complete list of all categories, including the ones that don't have any page, see Special:Allpages/Category:.

Adding a page or file to a Category

Each Category page contains an index to the pages and files belonging to that category. For example, this page belongs to "Category:Help". If you open Category:Help you will see a link to this page along with links to all other pages that have been assigned to the "Help" category.

The category/categories a page/file belongs to appear at the bottom of the page. A page/file can belong to any number of categories and you can jump to these categories by clicking the links at the bottom of the page.

To assign a page/file to a category, simply add the text "[[Category:''Category name'']]" to the page (replacing Category name with the category you would like to use). Traditionally this text is added at the bottom of the page, making it easier for users and editors to find these links.

Category pages can belong to Categories

In theory every Antwiki page should belong to at least one category, and every Category page should also belong to at least one Category. By doing this every page within Antwiki can be accessed by clicking links on other pages. Additionally, by tagging pages with categories and linking Category pages to other Categories, a single "Table of Contents" is created. Within Antwiki this table of contents starts at Category:Antwiki and works downwards to essentially every page. This hierarchy can also be viewed as a "tree" at Special:CategoryTree and setting the category to "Antwiki".

As an example of how this works, species list category pages (such as category:Iridomyrmex_species) are tagged with the category [[Category:List of species]], this category providing a list of all species list pages (see Category:List of species). Following the hierarchy upwards, [[Category:List of species]] belongs to Category:Classification, which itself belongs to Category:Antwiki. Give this a try by starting at Category:Antwiki and clicking on "Classification", then "List of species" and finally "Acanthognathus species".

Creating a category page

Category pages are automatically created when a category is added to an existing page. However, these automatically created pages contain little more than a list of pages belonging to the category. Links to these simple lists from other Antwiki pages are shown in red lettering.

To make these pages more useful a bit of time should be spent expanding them. The category page contains 2 sections, an optional text section that can be edited, like any other page, which is normally used to describe the category and the automatically generated, alphabetical list of all pages/files in the category, complete with links to these pages/files. It's is the first section that needs attention. It is also the only part of the page that can be directly edited.

Ideally the text section should contain a short introduction to the category as well as category tags placing this category into the larger context of the entire wiki. Adding this information only takes a few minutes but adds considerably to the value of Antwiki. Once a category page has edited text added, links to that category page are all shown in blue.

Linking to a category

There are times when it is useful to link to a category page from within an Antwiki page. For example, the Taxoboxes on genus pages have a link to a list of species known for that genus. There are also any number of category links on this page as well!

To create a link to a category page add "[[:Category:''Category name'']]" to the page (replacing Category name with the category name). Note that this is exactly the same as adding a category except that a colon (":") has been added near the front.

To change the link text that appears on the page add text inside the link tag after a pipe. For example, to link to the species list for the genus Linepithema using the link text "Species List" you would add [[:category:Linepithema species|Species List]] to the page at the point where you wanted the link, which would result in Species List appearing on the page.

As explained in the previous section, links to unedited category pages that contain a list of pages with that category show up in red lettering. Category pages that have been edited, i.e., there is additional text added above the list of pages in that category, show up as links with blue lettering.

Files (mostly Images, but also PDFs and others)

Categories can be added to files in the same way as they are added to normal text-based pages. Categorizing image helps others find all the great photos you contribute to Antwiki. Every category listed on an image page creates, or adds to, a gallery-of-images page for that category. For example adding an [[Category:montage]] to an image would add the image to the Category:montage page. This can be a bit tricky for some genera since the images come after all the other text on the page. If you go to Category:Aphaenogaster, for example, you would have to go to the second page in this category since there are over 200 names (the limit for a category page is to list no more than 200 items).

We strongly suggest that any image of an ant include a category for the genus and for the full species name or, if not identified to species, a genus category. For example, the following image is placed in these three categories:

[[Category:Aphaenogaster]][[Category:Aphaenogaster kimberleyensis]][[Category:montage]]

File:Aphaenogaster kimberleyensis ANIC32-017982 head 40-web.jpg

You can look at each of these category pages to see how these get sorted out with similarly categorized pages and files.

If you want to keep track of all the images you upload, you can also add a category for yourself ([[Category:''yourname'']]), replacing yourname with, well, you know.

A few final thoughts

If possible use an existing category rather than creating a new one. The list of all categories should be checked and where possible one of these should be selected.
Unlike other wiki pages, it is not possible to rename (move) a category. It is necessary to create a new category and change the category tag on every page.
For a general discussion of categories see Mediawiki's discussion.