Help:Categories

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Pages in MEpedia can be grouped into categories. Categories are one of the main ways MEpedia organizes information for readers. Each category also gets its own page, and that page name begins with "Category:".

You can see which category or categories a given page belongs to by looking at the end of the page, where the categories are listed. You can then click on a category listed at the end of a page to get to its "Category:" page.

Which categories should my page belong to?

Each page should belong to as many categories as reasonably apply to it. To get an idea of which categories a newly created page might belong to, you can:

  • Browse similar pages to see which categories they've been added to.
  • Browse the list of categories with their pages at MEpedia:Contents.
  • The MEpedia article outlines also suggest categories for common types of pages.

Is this category right?

You may have trouble deciding whether a page belongs in a given category. Remember that one of the main functions of categories is to be able to find pages by looking through a given category. So, if you're unclear, simply ask yourself "If I were looking for this page, would I probably look through this category?"

How to specify a page's categories (Visual Editor)

To change the categories that a page belongs to:

Page options icon
  1. Click on the 'Page Options' link represented by three horizontal bars towards the top-right of the screen.
  2. Click on 'Categories'.
  3. If you see an inappropriate category listed, you can remove that category by first clicking on the category and then clicking on the black "garbage can" icon.
  4. You can type the name of any new category into the empty box labelled 'Add a Category'.
  5. Finally, click 'Apply Changes'.

How to specify a page's categories (Source Editor)

To change the categories that a page belongs to:

  1. Scroll down to the end of the page, where the categories are listed.
  2. To add a new category, add [[Category:Category_name]] to the end of the page, where Category_name is the name of the category you're adding.
  3. Be sure to remove any inappropriate categories listed.

Note: If you want to link to a category in the middle of the page, without accidentally adding the category to the page, begin the link with a colon, such as [[:Category:Category_name]]

Sub-categories

A category can contain more than just articles. A category can also contain another category, and this other category is then called a "sub-category". The category containing the sub-category is called the "parent category". (or "super-category")

To specify that a sub-category belongs in a parent category, simply edit the sub-category's "Category:" page, and add that page to the parent category, just as you would add any other page to the parent category.

Reading a "Category:" page

(content TBD) You can see which pages are in a given category by looking at the given "Category:" page.

Learn more